Editor-in-Chief of Remote Sensing Resigns from Fallout Over Our Paper

September 2nd, 2011 by Roy W. Spencer, Ph. D.

[NOTE: the August, 2011 temperature update appears below this post.]

SCORE:
IPCC :1
Scientific Progress: 0

[also see updates at end of post]

It has been brought to my attention that as a result of all the hoopla over our paper published in Remote Sensing recently, that the Editor-in-Chief, Wolfgang Wagner, has resigned. His editorial explaining his decision appears here.

First, I want to state that I firmly stand behind everything that was written in that paper.

But let’s look at the core reason for the Editor-in-Chief’s resignation, in his own words, because I want to strenuously object to it:

…In other words, the problem I see with the paper by Spencer and Braswell is not that it declared a minority view (which was later unfortunately much exaggerated by the public media) but that it essentially ignored the scientific arguments of its opponents. This latter point was missed in the review process, explaining why I perceive this paper to be fundamentally flawed and therefore wrongly accepted by the journal

But the paper WAS precisely addressing the scientific arguments made by our opponents, and showing why they are wrong! That was the paper’s starting point! We dealt with specifics, numbers, calculations…while our critics only use generalities and talking points. There is no contest, as far as I can see, in this debate. If you have some physics or radiative transfer background, read the evidence we present, the paper we were responding to, and decide for yourself.

If some scientists would like do demonstrate in their own peer-reviewed paper where *anything* we wrote was incorrect, they should submit a paper for publication. Instead, it appears the IPCC gatekeepers have once again put pressure on a journal for daring to publish anything that might hurt the IPCC’s politically immovable position that climate change is almost entirely human-caused. I can see no other explanation for an editor resigning in such a situation.

People who are not involved in scientific research need to understand that the vast majority of scientific opinions spread by the media recently as a result of the fallout over our paper were not even the result of other scientists reading our paper. It was obvious from the statements made to the press.

Kudos to Kerry Emanuel at MIT, and a couple other climate scientists, who actually read the paper before passing judgment.

I’m also told that RetractionWatch has a new post on the subject. Their reporter told me this morning that this was highly unusual, to have an editor-in-chief resign over a paper that was not retracted.

Apparently, peer review is now carried out by reporters calling scientists on the phone and asking their opinion on something most of them do not even do research on. A sad day for science.

UPDATE #1: Since I have been asked this question….the editor never contacted me to get my side of the issue. He apparently only sought out the opinions of those who probably could not coherently state what our paper claimed, and why.

UPDATE #2: This ad hominem-esque Guardian article about the resignation quotes an engineer (engineer??) who claims we have a history of publishing results which later turn out to be “wrong”. Oh, really? Well, in 20 years of working in this business, the only indisputable mistake we ever made (which we immediately corrected, and even published our gratitude in Science to those who found it) was in our satellite global temperature monitoring, which ended up being a small error in our diurnal drift adjustment — and even that ended up being within our stated error bars anyway. Instead, it has been our recent papers have been pointing out the continuing mistakes OTHERS have been making, which is why our article was entitled. “On the Misdiagnosis of….”. Everything else has been in the realm of other scientists improving upon what we have done, which is how science works.

UPDATE #3: At the end of the Guardian article, it says Andy Dessler has a paper coming out in GRL next week, supposedly refuting our recent paper. This has GOT to be a record turnaround for writing a paper and getting it peer reviewed. And, as usual, we NEVER get to see papers that criticize our work before they get published.

350 Responses to “Editor-in-Chief of Remote Sensing Resigns from Fallout Over Our Paper”

You trying to frame this as something to do with the IPCC “gate keepers” is unsubstantiated and pathetic. You are the one trying to politicize this Roy and the one entertaining conspiracy theories. Your paper has not been retracted, so please quite whining about censorship and gatekeeping.

It would also help greatly if you calmly and objectively read Dr. Wagner’s reasons for resigning which he states clearly in his open letter:

“So why, after a more careful study of the pro and contra arguments, have I changed my initial view? The problem is that comparable studies published by other authors have already been refuted in open discussions and to some extend also in the literature (Trenberth et al. 2010), a fact which was ignored by Spencer and Braswell in their paper and, unfortunately, not picked up by the reviewers. In other words, the problem I see with the paper by Spencer and Braswell is not that it declared a minority view (which was later unfortunately much exaggerated by the public media) but that it essentially ignored the scientific arguments of its opponents. This latter point was missed in the review process, explaining why I perceive this paper to be fundamentally flawed and therefore wrongly accepted by the journal. This regrettably brought me to the decision to resign as Editor-in-Chief?to make clear that the journal Remote Sensing takes the review process very seriously.”

Two questions:
1) Who reviewed your paper Roy? Did you submit a list of potential reviewers? If so who, and were they amongst the reviewers selected to review your paper?
2) Why did you ignore the work of Trenberth et al. (2010) even though it was related to your RS paper?

There is no conflict at all that I can see between S&B11 and Trenberth et al 2010. The conclusions of S&B11 seem clearly correct and most certainly are not different from the views given in the discussion quoted below.

‘It is not controversial to state that climate models are
deficient in terms of tropical variability in the atmosphere on many timescales [Lin et al., 2006; Lin, 2007] and a more
realistic simulation of ENSO events in coupled simulations
remains a high priority for model developers. During El Niño,the warming of the tropical eastern Pacific and associated changes in the Walker circulation, atmospheric stability, and winds lead to decreases in stratocumulus clouds, increased solar radiation at the surface, and an enhanced warming sothat even models without ocean dynamics are capable of emulating some ENSO?like variability [Kitoh et al., 1999]. Positive cloud feedbacks in observations have been shown to occur in association with ENSO and these variations are generally not well depicted in models [Kang et al., 2002; Clement et al., 2009], but challenges also exist for diagnosing these interactions in observations, as it is difficult to identify cause and effect in the context of multiple interactive variations.’ Trenberth et al 2010.

I am not going to bother with a long rebuttal of your article and or your subsequent attempts to justify it. I am not looking to find common ground either, because there is none to start with. In other words I am calling your bluff. Your tactics are predictable and disreputable. You are seeking weaknesses in the peer review system in order to generate PR opportunities for your sceptic agenda. That this is a successful tactic doesn’t mean it isn’t dishonest. It is. You call yourself a committed Christian. How can you?

“Kudos to Kerry Emanuel at MIT, and a couple other climate scientists, who actually read the paper before passing judgment.”

Actually the problem here is more likely that Dr. Emmanuel may not have read your paper carefully enough. We all know that even bad science can sometimes be convincing upon a cursory read. But the reality is that when climate scientists made the effort to replicate your work they found serious problems with it. You need to move away from using that overly simplistic model Roy, it keeps getting you in trouble and you keep refusing to learn from previous mistakes.

Related to #1, my understanding is that the reviewers are typically anonymous to the author.

2) Could you explain what specifically in Trenberth et al (2010) was related to or contradicted the RS paper? From what I recall the Trenberth GRL paper was primarily concerned with issues using tropical SST with TOA fluxes, and recommended using global temperatures. Indeed, I believe Spencer’s RS paper does use global temperatures. The Trenberth paper also concedes that models poorly replicate ENSO variability. There’s a lot in both papers, so pointing out what you believe should’ve been referenced or refuted would be helpful.

I am very familiar with the peer-review process thanks. Roy may or may not not know who ultimately reviewed the paper, but you should know that many journals nowadays require that authors submit a list of suggested reviewers. I would like to know who Roy suggested review his paper, if anyone. Only he can speak to that.

Re Trenberth et al. (2010), it is relevant b/c that paper dealt with ENSO and ENSO is well-known to have an impact on global temperature with a peak correlation with a lag near 5 months 4-7 months. in fact, S&B11 stater:

“Finally, since much of the temperature variability during 2000-2010 was due to ENSO [8], we conclude that ENSO-related temperature variations are partly radiatively forced. We hypothesize that changes in the coupled ocean-atmosphere circulation during the El Niño and La Niña phases of ENSO cause differing changes in cloud cover, which then modulate the radiative balance of the climate system.”

Now Trenberth et al. (2010) conlcude that “Any feedback analysis must also recognize changes in ocean heat storage and atmospheric energy transport into and out of the tropics which are especially large during ENSO events. While the tropics are important in climate sensitivity, values of the latter based on only tropical results are misleading.”

the fact remains that Roy’s tuned and overly simplistic model is not capable of simulating those critical processes.

So omitting Trenberth et al. (2010) is indeed relevant and it was a glaring omission from S&B2011, especially in the context of their discussion about ENSO and its role in modulating global temperatures for the period of study.

It is telling that Mr Spencer’s answer to critics who point out the flaws of his theory is – banning them, with CAPITAL LETTERS like a screaming child. If he was as confident as he pretends to be on what he is saying he could just calmly refute the criticism (like a good scientist would do). Instead his reaction is like that of a religious fundamentalist who sees himself confronted with difficult questions and the weakness of his rational standing.

It doesn’t surprise at all to see that Mr Spencer, just like so many who claim that global warming is not man-made, are also vocal supporters of free market capitalism (the devastating consequences of which the world has been experiencing over the past years, on top of climate change), and more often than not, vocal ‘Christians’. (I’m christian myself, and always feel the need to distance myself from the sort of people who use their religion in political/scientific/etc argumentation). After all, admitting that global warming is man-made would require to take responsibility and admit that uncontrolled capitalism is not really good for the environment, and that is something free market proponents don’t like at all because it seems not to be good for the economy, at least in the short term! How convenient to sit back and say that it’s all in God’s hands.

Last but not least, as John Rowlands has pointed out, it is sad that the discussion between the self-pronounced scientists is so vain and much more about who is ‘right’ than about what actually can be done to face a catastrophe that is well under way already.

maik, you found free market capitalism somewhere? wow. deserving of a paper all its own! i would love to see where you think it has been tried. pls dont confuse merchantilism or crony capitalism with free market capitalism when you begin your paper.

Why the obsession and offense with the simple reporting of scientific results? Is there any other field where a peer-reviewed, non-retracted paper would lead to such outrage and the resignation of a journal editor? Why are you so defensive? Why no confidence that science can handle a single paper that challenges the prevailing orthodoxy? Your tone speaks volumes.

Actually, Roy is the one being defensive, as are you. What you are doing is called “projection”. And my perceived tone by you is not relevant in a discussion about physics and facts. You are trying to obfuscate. How about instead of doing that, focussing on the facts and science. Roy speak for himself, please let him do that.

Obscurity why are you dodging the questions? Don’t you trust the peer review system to properly vet the findings of ONE paper? If there are errors in methodology please point them out. Or better yet publish your own opposing conclusions in a peer reviewed journal.

1. Back radiation doesn’t exist [it’s Prevost exchange energy so can do no thermodynamic work, as any professional physicist or engineer should know ].

2. Clouds with small droplets have lower albedo, easily proved because if you watch clouds with coarsening droplets, they get darker underneath [rain-clouds are dark, geddit!]

3. Because the aerosol optical physics in the climate models is wrong AND that same physics is used in the satellite ‘reflection’- optical depth algorithms, some satellite data wrongly place rain clouds with large droplets in the small droplet category.

We have a real problem now: no doubt dissenters, i.e. objective scientists will start to be forced to recant, obviously like this editor.

1. Back radiation doesn’t exist [it’s Prevost exchange energy so can do no thermodynamic work, as any professional physicist or engineer should know ].
—————
Unfortunately when you point an IR thermometer at the sky you can measure it’s temperature.
So a simple measurement using an instrument purchased at your local electronics store proves you to be wrong.

Dr. Spencer, this is meaningless, and it is just a ploy by the global warmers who are liars, who change their story to make the present climate try to fit their obsolete theory, and try to attack anyone that dare defies their STUPID theory.

As I have said the only thing that matters is who is right and who is wrong. Nothing else matters and Dr. Spencer ,you are correct and they know it and that is why they react the way they do. If your thoughts and interpretations were not a threat to them ,they would just more or less ignore what you have to say. The reality is they care very much what you have to say, because they lack confidence in their own positions, which they very well should since everything they have predicted turns out to be wrong, and since they have to keep changing what they say almost on a constant basis.

Dr. Spencer we our dealing with liars, people that are in denial and people that are trying for dear life to hold on to their obsolete theory, and will try to do what ever it takes to accomplish those ends.

I would not let this bother you, in the least, instead be glad that you are receiving so much attention for your efforts.

You allege to be concerned about the advancement of science, as am I and other scientists. What I find hypocritical and ironic is you claiming that Dr. Wagner’s decision is an impediment to the advancement of science, when you sat by silently while Heartland (i.e., James Taylor, a lawyer by training) and Fox and other “skeptic” individuals and groups grossly overstated, distorted, misrepresented the findings in Spencer and Braswell (2011).. And that sorry episode raises other questions for you to answer:

1) What was your role in the Forbes piece that a lawyer from Heartland (Mr. Taylor) authored?
2) Did you at any time speak to James Taylor about the content of his opinion piece?
3) Once the piece appeared did you at any time inform Mr. Taylor that he was misrepresenting your science and overstating your findings? if not, why not?

What you fail to be willing to accept is that this fiasco reflects incredibly poorly on you and your fellow ‘skeptics’.

I had nothing to do with James Taylor’s article. It might have been a little over the top on interpretation (but not necessarily wrong).

Have you asked the myriad IPCC scientists why they have not intervened as their results are misrepresented with impunity by every journalist in the world who is looking for the next Pulitzer Prize for Saving the World? Or by Nobel Prize and Academy Award winners who have no idea what they are talking about?

Dr Spencer wrote : “I had nothing to do with James Taylor’s article. It might have been a little over the top on interpretation (but not necessarily wrong).”

A “little over the top on interpretation” ?! I cannot believe that anyone (let alone a scientist interested in the facts, and the proper presentation of such facts) can be unembarrassed and not keen to disassociate themself from any article which contains fifteen different mentions, in various forms, of the noun ‘alarm’. Do you not find that “a little over the top” at all ?

And how about the title (‘New NASA Data Blow Gaping Hole In Global Warming Alarmism’) – Is that “not necessarily wrong” ? Or do you have a definition for ‘Global Warming Alarmism’ that you are using which makes that statement “not necessarily wrong” ?

Over the last 20 years, whenever a peer-reviewed paper came out that even remotely hinted that the world was warming due to anthropomorphic CO2, 99.9999999 % of the media broke out the brass bands and mega-phones and loudly proclaimed that the World was going to burst into-flames unless we prostrated ourselves before the god of Global Warming. Many of the supposedly dispassionate climate scientists who published these peer-reviewed papers openly collaborated with their bosom-buddy alarmists in the media to whip up a frenzy of fear in the minds of the lay-public.

Given the “logic” of your argument, their should be an immediate mass resignation of most of the senior editors of climate science journals, since post-publication comments now appear to be a critical factor in an article passing peer-review.

First that Spencer and Braswell did not deal with objections to their previous work and the ideas they set forth. OK, that’s a technical, but the red flag was how Dr. Spencer and his allies exploited and exaggerated the publication in the general public.

Just like the IPCC scientists, I state to the public what I believe what the results mean. I cannot, however, speak for what others choose to write. Your accusation can be equally leveled at the IPCC leadership, who have turned a plausible hypothesis into a virtual certainty in the public’s mind.

Please stop being so naive, and stop hiding behind that silly screen name, if you want to be taken more seriously.

This is the first time in American history that public reaction to a peer reviewed article has been used to evaluate the quality of the article. The public reaction is entirely irrelevant to the editor’s judgment or job.

Think for a minute what a mess we would be in if public reaction were considered. The public would be censoring scientists.

There is one thing I really wonder about. Wagner stated that perhaps the three reviewers shared your point of view. The only point of view I can see in your paper is that measurements should be compared with models to prove their validity or invalidity. Does he mean this kind of point of view that should not be used in scientific literature anymore?

This is such a non important issue in the big scheme of things. This is another , show , and has nothing to do with the reality of what the climate will be doing in the near future, which is global cooling.

I’m not sure the journals care how irresponsible these people are on the blogs, or if a paper can be “retracted” for post-publication material not affiliated with the journal itself (the Wagner letter discusses how promoting such distortions is not acceptable however in terms of a researchers credibility). The fact is that the paper itself was riddled with fundamental errors, as is all of these types of articles that come out by people with an unmoving faith in a very low climate sensitivity.

It is easy to play the “I’m a victim” card which is precisely what Roy Spencer is doing; it works well with the conspiracy crowds, but if there was real substance here in the first place it would have been submitted to a journal that is actually read by the mainstream atmospheric physics community. So right away we know it was not intended for scientists to read.

“The fact is that the paper itself was riddled with fundamental errors, as is all of these types of articles that come out by people with an unmoving faith in a very low climate sensitivity.”

The point is utterly irrelevant to this discussion. The peer reviewers did their jobs, the editor was hammered by Warmista, and the editor resigned before finishing his job. The editor should have insisted to the Warmista that they offer peer reviewed replies.

What we have here is asymmetric warfare. Does anyone remember a journal editor resigning over the publication of any one of the overwhelming mass of bogus alarmist publications because reviewers ‘missed’ something or other?

“the only indisputable mistake we ever made (which we immediately corrected, and even published our gratitude in Science to those who found it)”.

That is true, but what you are not sharing is that it took almost 13 years after the original papers that you and John published that the erroneous adjustments that you and John used were corrected. I would assert that you and John were aware of the potential problems with your UAH product (e.g., it was known to be diverging from other temperature records) before the 2005 papers were published by Wentz, Mears and colleagues. So in the end someone else had to propose a solution to the problem, you just implemented it. The fact that the artificial cooling in your data went uncorrected for so long was an excellent example of confirmation bias on your part.

OMG! You did it again! Wentz & Mears discovered a correction that needed to be made, one which no one else would have ever thought of (orbital decay)…improvements in science like this happen all the time.

We have also found an error in THEIR processing, but we were gentlemen enough to let them know rather than writing a paper on it! And now THEIR temperatures are diverging COOLER than ours, and by a substantial amount! Have you noticed that?? It’s because their diurnal cycle correction is based on climate MODELS, which have notoriously bad diurnal cycles. (Ask Trenberth, whom you apparently rely on for talking points).

Chris , I would like to know who are these so called atmospehric scientist that are suppose to be the final authority on how what was presented was corect or not correct, or went through the proper procedures.

If they are the same ones that have helped to create the pathetic global warming models ,GOD HELP US.

Chris Colose and Eli Rabett both diving into unfamiliar territory in support of someone unidentified calling himself ‘Obscurity’.

Smells like a concerted effort to discredit Roy and divert the casual reader.Salvatore correctly suggests that it is all just a delaying strategy in the hope that a bit more warming turns up soon (unlikely in my opinion).

As it happens Roy’s material fits better with my conclusions than do the IPCC models.

Can we have some substantive objections to Roy’s paper rather than ad hominems and distractingly obscure diversionary strategies?

The system response to more GHGs is clearly strongly negative rather than positive.

Deal with that problem sensibly in terms that non specialist readers can understand.

Elsewhere I have explained exactly why and how that negative response arises but are there any substantial objections ?

“Dr Spencer is a committed Christian as well as a professional scientist”

Since when do we need to list people’s religious affiliations and the like? I demand that all “climate scientists” have this information published under their pictures in the BBC from now on.

This was intended to “label” Dr. Spencer as a “kook”.
In the eyes of the communist/socialist/new ager crowd possibly?
They are anti-creator to the core. And also fond of any method to attack a person, no matter how disgusting.
The end justifies the means in these people’s minds.

Yes I noticed they had labeled Roy…yet strangely enough there is no religious label attached to good old Bob Ward? Wonder why?

The BBC are advocates for Mann Made Global Warming ™ and now their boy Jones has published his report on the state of scientific reporting at the BBC the BBC can no ignore sceptics without care because thats what Boy Jones said they could do!

This quite brings to mind the forced resignations of professors at Catholic or religious universities whose work does not toe the theological line. This editor committed a heresy and the Most Holy Church of Anthropogenic Global Climate Change will not allow that heresy to stand. From that perspective, Mr. Wagner simply had to go.

There was nothing whatsoever wrong with the paper, which is why it got published in the first place. Wagner is an idiot or allowed himself to be blackmailed by the AGW cabal, which comes to the same. There is no such thing as “a paper that should have never been published”. If you don’t like a paper, publish your own and present your own counter-arguments. This is how real science is done. The only role of the reviewers should be to check if the paper is relevant to the subject of the journal, if the reasoning presented in the paper is logical, if the data is obtained, reduced and presented using proper procedures, if the mathematics is correct. All else should be the subject of open discussion in the scientific press. This is what it’s for. People who don’t understand this are unfit to be scientists or, indeed, editors…

There is no place in science for “toeing the line” with some “doctrine” or “consensus”. The best science is always the one that breaks the consensus. This is why we celebrate Einstein and Boltzmann today, for example. In their day, both stood up against the prevailing “consensus”. Yet, today we know that there is no “ether”–Einstein was right, Kelvin was wrong. And, yes, thermodynamics is derivable from the kinetic theory of matter and… atoms do exist–Boltzmann was right too.

Finally someone stating the only point the means anything in this discussion. The only people that control what their publication publishes are the owners/editors of that publication. If they publish rubbish, their publication suffers. If they publish according to a dogma or doctrine they will limit their audience to the believers of that dogma or doctrine. If they want their publication to be well-respected, widely read, in a word successful, then they need to publish high-quality papers that spark debate and further analysis and study. This will increase the numbers of people who will use your publication, increasing the value both scientifically and commercially. This is called letting the free market determine the success or failure of your venture.

If the editor feels that he has failed some quality control process that the publication should adhere to, then resignation is a reasonable consequence. If he has been bullied into resigning because of other people’s opinion then he is not worthy of the position of editor in any case. If the publication continues down the path of following dogma rather than discussion, then it will ultimately pass into obscurity and will not be missed.

“But Wagner says he now accepts the subsequent criticism from other climate scientists that the peer-review process used to test the paper’s findings was flawed. “As the case presents itself now, the [peer review] editorial team unintentionally selected three reviewers who probably share some climate sceptic notions of the authors.”

That is utterly priceless. If you don’t like the verdict change the jury and try again.

Or make the voters keep voting until they get the ‘right’ answer.

And that seems to be accepted as a legitimate approach?

Better confirmation of the peer review problems highlighted by the Climategate imbroglio could not have been imagined.

Wagner has been screwed by the climate consensus because he inadvertently allowed scientists onto this particular review panel who did not produce the required outcome.

It is obvious how the system works. Take a step, however innocently, that embarrases the establishment and you need to find another career.

From my experience in publishing in peer reviewed and non-peer reviewed academic journals, it is HIGHLY unusual for the editors to simply knuckle under and state the article was wrong. Obviously it’s even MORE peculiar to see a resignation come out of it.

You are absolutely correct to suggest there must be a far greater force at work here. The reaction simply doesn’t make sense.

First, if an article is challenged, the journal wants to save face by showing that they were RIGHT to publish in the first place. No such effort here. They simply folded. No effort. No pride.

Somebody threatened these people and demanded that they make an example of the editor. You know the field better than I do, so I’ll leave the judgment of “who” up to you, and the future historians who will dissect this Global Warming scam to show just how deep the “infection” ran.

I am here (or anywhere) TO ARGUE in good faith with peers who can state a position in their own words and who share my goal of reaching the truth. I have limitless energy for that. I have no energy for tips, taunts, links, whatever else.

William,
The RC reply is not really substantive, is it? It says the paper does not provide error bars or uncertainties and that is definitely a short-coming, but not a refutation of the paper. It certainly is not so bad as Michael Mann running an R2 verification statistic, finding out his work does not pass and failing to report the fact.

Regarding the issue of moving heat around, Dr Spencer has already responded to this when he wrote:
“First of all, our results were GLOBAL, so transport between regions are irrelevant to the issue at hand.

“Secondly, the lag associated with the heat carrying capacity was central to the point we were making!!! If you even bothered to read our paper, you would understand that!”

That explanation shoots a big hole in the RC post.

The RC post also refers to rebutting Lindzen’s paper, but they are ignoring the fact Lindzen has republished after a correction with very little change in the result. The RC post is long on claims but short on substance.

It hurts to look at the scoreboard and see you are losing, doesn’t it William?

“I cannot, however, speak for what others choose to write. Your accusation can be equally leveled at the IPCC leadership, who have turned a plausible hypothesis into a virtual certainty in the public’s mind. ”

Ely says c’mon, read what Wagner said:
———————–
With this step I would also like to personally protest against how the authors and like-minded climate sceptics have much exaggerated the paper’s conclusions in public statements, e.g., in a press release of The University of Alabama in Huntsville from 27 July 2011 [2], the main author’s personal homepage [3], the story “New NASA data blow gaping hole in global warming alarmism”
——————————–

Note the words THE AUTHORS. This ain’t “what other people say” and it ain’t what the IPCC says. It’s what YOU said

Personally, I would recommend that free speech in the professional scientific arena be restricted to truth as best the speaker can determine it, and that exaggerations, misrepresentations, and lies be unacceptable.

As far as penalties go, well, that depends on context. Calling out (as Wagner has done) is certainly warranted; retraction is definitely a priority where incompetence, incorrectness or even fraud is demonstrated; and in the case of explicit fraud I’d say legal proceedings may be warranted.

Free speech is not an endless right, even in the muddled democracy of the States. If it were an unfettered right, and if you think that it is, then all of the climate change deniers should be loudly supporting the professional consensus’ right to conduct its work as it sees fit, and to communicate its results without impediment.

The fact is that the denial movement is busting a gut to scupper the consensus scientific speech, so your hand-wringing about your right to such is mere princess melodrama.

Another horrifying example of how many “scientists” today are pedantic technical specialists who do not understand science, have no ethic of science, and are motivated by ideological goals…even to the point of fanaticism. The proper method for disputing a scientific claim is to show, scientifically, why another person’s results are incorrect. If you disagree, then publish your disagreement in the literature. Make your argument. Put your claims out there for debate. Putting political pressure on a journal editor is, more than anything else, a statement that the scientific facts do not back up your viewpoint and you have to result to thuggery. And resigning from a journal in an effort to appease critics is also reprehensible and self-serving. Again, this entire episode is another nail in the coffin of demonstrating how alarmists are not scientists but ideological fanatics who will do anything to suppress viewpoints they do not agree with. If this trend continues, what we may well witness in our lifetimes is the reversal of the Scientific Revolution that began in 1543 with the publication of Copernicus’ Revolutions and Vesalius’ Fabrica.

David,
You write;
“What evidence is there that “political” pressure was put on the editor?”

Are you serious? An editor just resigned from a journal because of a paper which has not been refuted or withdrawn. AFAIK, this is a first in the annals of scientific publishing. “Political” pressure is doubtless the cause. It would be the height of naivete is even question the fact political pressure is the cause. This resignation will send a chilling message to journal editors everywhere not to publish skeptic papers, even when there is no serious challenge to them scientifically.

Hans Storch resigned as editor-in-chief of “Climate Research” after something similar happened with the 2003 Soon & Baliunas, which also was never retracted.

I still see no evidence of “political pressure,” and you do not offer any, just that it has to be so because you say so. However, we do have the editor’s resignation letter; he wrote:

“After having become aware of the situation, and studying the various pro and contra arguments, I agree with the critics of the paper. Therefore, I would like to take the responsibility for this editorial decision and, as a result, step down as Editor-in-Chief of the journal Remote Sensing.”

He studied the responses for himself and agreed they were serious, and he resigned. Clearly he is taking personal responsibility so the journal he cares about does not suffer (more).

Your point might be stronger if the journal itself was a reputable one in the field of climatology (it might be reputable, but it was clear that people most familiar with the subject of climate feedback analysis or the data in this study were not consulted). But you also don’t know what effort the editor already went through (personally) to hear various sides and come to the conclusion he did.

I’m not clear on who the reviewers are, but it appears that they were outliers in the field of climate itself, with no effort at balance. Without the right expertise to notice the suspect nature of the paper, the editor can only base decisions on the reviewers, and they apparently did not do a very good job. The simple fact is that this paper should not have been published. There was a similar instance with the Soon and Baliunas duo years back where an editor re-signed after a fundamentally flawed review process let a horrible paper skip through. Same thing here.

“The use of satellite data to check the functionality of all sorts of geophysical models is therefore a very important part of our work. But it should not be done in isolation by the remote sensing scientists. Interdisciplinary cooperation with modelers is required in order to develop a joint understanding of where and why models deviate from satellite data. Only through this close cooperation the complex aspects involved in the satellite retrievals and the modeling processes can be properly taken into account.”

Now, this is a truly novel step in the history of science and the history of peer review. Data that contradicts some model cannot be accepted for publication in an article whose authors are not modelers because only modelers understand the “complex aspects” involved in “modeling processes.” In plain English, what this means is that data that contradicts model results must be pre-approved by approved modelers before it can be submitted for publication.

Is it true that if you look at all of the models and break the data into 10 year runs to compare with the ~10 years of satellite data to get a better idea of uncertainty that the data largely fall within the outputs of some of the models?

Isn’t it better to compare 10 year runs than a 100 year average with no uncertainty bounds?

Is it true that models which simulate ENSO well do not disagree with the satellite measurements in the manner the RC post suggests?

You complained in “The Great Global Warming Blunder” that your work on the PDO had been unfairly rejected. And yet, when I took your “simple climate model” apart and reproduced your methods, I found that your “statistical method” was complete garbage, and you could have gotten any answer you wanted. All you had to do was manipulate the ocean mixed-layer depth, which is why you came up with the wildly unphysical value of 700 m. Here’s the link, in case you’ve forgotten:

Even though you blogged that you weren’t going to respond to my critique because you were too busy preparing to publish something (now we know what) in the peer-reviewed literature, in subsequent blog posts on ocean heat content changes you have implicitly admitted that a 700 m mixed layer is wildly unphysical, and yet now you are complaining that you have only made one mistake that other scientists have definitively proven wrong. What absolute self-serving fantasy.

Barry, your posts criticizing me are three times the length of a peer reviewed paper. There are so many problems with them I don’t know where to start…so I don’t.

If you want to refute something I have published in the peer-reviewed literature, then submit a paper to a journal. When you get something published on feedbacks in the climate system, I will start taking you more seriously.

In the meantime, write your own book about how you think the climate system works.

“Barry, your posts criticizing me are three times the length of a peer reviewed paper. There are so many problems with them I don’t know where to start…so I don’t.”

Heck, I’ve written longer peer-reviewed papers than that! My critique was an extended book review, after all, and was much shorter than your book.

If you don’t know where to start, why don’t you let me help by pointing out what I thought was the most important point? I thought the most damning criticism was in Part 3 (linked above) where I showed that, using your method, you could have gotten any climate sensitivity you wanted, with EXACTLY the same quality of fit. This is a crystal clear result–what is there even to argue about? If you don’t know how to do a least-squares regression properly, I could give you a table of model parameters to input to your model, so you can see what the output would be (i.e., exactly the same every time with climate sensitivities ranging from far less than 1° to several degrees). All you would have to do is show that my list of parameter combinations don’t really give the same model output. If they do all give the same output, however, there’s not much more to say, is there?

Look around on the Internet, Roy. A number of bona fide climate scientists have linked my critiques to illustrate how inept your modeling efforts are. If you want to make them and me look stupid, all you have to do is show why I was totally off base to point out that you could have gotten any answer you wanted.

You go on to say:

“If you want to refute something I have published in the peer-reviewed literature, then submit a paper to a journal. When you get something published on feedbacks in the climate system, I will start taking you more seriously.”

Alas, I seem to remember part of your book where you said you thought it would be good for other scientists to have a go at critiquing climate science, since it had become so insular. Am I remembering incorrectly? I’ll have to check that after the weekend. The sad thing is that I didn’t have to be a climate scientist to pick apart your work. I just needed to know some basic statistics. And once again, the major flaw in your latest paper is that you didn’t do the statistics properly (or at all?).

Whatever it takes to allow yourself to pretend you have only made one demonstrated mistake in your career, I guess.

You go on again:

“In the meantime, write your own book about how you think the climate system works.”

Wait, I thought you said my book review was too long. Now I have to write a book-length treatment? If I did write a book, would you think it was worth responding to?

Gee, Matter, those are good points. The problem here is that Roy has repeatedly botched his statistics (magically always in the direction of lower climate sensitivity), and he ignores the criticisms. Most scientists have made dumb mistakes, but you have to learn to really consider criticisms or you go on ad nauseum making the same blunders.

This is the best thing that could have ever happened to you. Your outrage must be an act. You should be the happiest author in the world right now.

Your paper was on the way to obscurity after being thoroughly trashed by the experts, but now it will live forever as evidence of the international conspiracy of scientists that are all working together to silence skeptics.

Bravo on writing a historically significant paper. Not many of us can say we have.

The reason that the AGW community have gone nuclear on this paper is because it strikes at the heart of the issue which is climate sensitivity (nothing else matters everything is secondary to this issues paleo data thermometers etc:). By directly attacking climate models by comparison with real world data Roy is attacking the heart of AGW this one paper if compelling enough could have undermined the whole AGW cause, it still might but the evidences is not overwhelming it may be part of the story but it needs to go further. I have found Roy unpublished comparisons of climate model ocean temperature profiles far more compelling since the discrepancy between model and reality is so clear.

No I am not a climate scientist but an aerospace system engineer. At least I understand control and feed back. I work with models of missiles that are at a high level of complexity validation and verification against real data is essential.

A high climate sensitive would lead to runaway all the evidence is to a bi stable condition ice ages and war periods only when we understand the process that controls this will understand climate. Plant life is clearly designed to work best at much higher C02 partial pressures than present indicating that current levels are unusually low.

If the money spend on AGW studies had been put into more comprehensive instrumentation,, satellite based terrestrial and ocean at all levels then we might understand the issues properly and have properly validated GCM

Roy keep up the good work and in do not let the naysayers get you down.

Its going to get great PRESS coverage Roy, “read this in SlashDot” With the indigent Experts circling ‘gleefully’ After their pet Models have holes blown in them, Once the work of the CERN regarding cloud formation get more coverage I would say the ‘Perfect Storm’ has arrived and Public opinion based in the real world will see the ‘gleefull’ as pathetic Al-Gore type Neo-cons with axes to grind and money to made.

Chris Colose and Eli Rabett(Halpern) and four others wrote the infamous “comment” on the Gerhard Gerlich and Ralf D. Tscheuschner paper.

Their main point was to claim that G&T said that cold objects cannot radiate to hotter objects.

Now whatever you might think of the G&T paper it contained several diagrams of hot and cold surfaces radiating to one another.
Similarly equations and calculations were based on mutual radiative transfer.

Now why did Chris Colose and Eli Rabett make such a stupid error?
Is it because they cannot read or is it because they are a couple of idealogical hacks.
Perhaps both reasons apply.

Now we can see what Copernicus and Galileo had to put up with. Except that this time it is not coming from Rome, but some hallowed ivory towers. The dogma has already effused the masses, which because of their ignorance they blindly follow, and those who see the flaws in the dogma are crucified. I work in tropical countries for well over a decade as a WHO paediatrician and all I can say is that every year it becomes colder and colder and now we are treating children for cold-induced pneumonia and seeing malnutrition because of crops dying because their are not suitable for colder climates. This year when I was in northern Vietnam it actually snowed overnight…. in the tropics. Can someone explain to me how global warming causes all this coldness? Is this some effect similar to sweating?

Stripping away all of the political crap that passes for agreement/refutation/criticism by the critics, what are the precise steps that would be needed to confirm/refute/extend your work?

With these steps established, the critics could make a simple choice — do the work or STFU. I see no demand for paper retraction with a logical chain of refutation.

I have seen no one claim that the assumptions or math are grossly inaccurate or that the conclusion is not supported by the linear logic of moving from point A to B. It is mostly argumentation based on “he said, she said” with few specifics.Sort of dueling to the death by paper cuts.

One can be wrong about assumptions, math and conclusions — but arguing over third-party presentation seems foolish and time-consuming.

My actual response when I read Roy’s latest paper was, “Great. He botched his statistics again, and this time he sneaked it past the peer-review system by submitting to an obscure, off-topic journal.” I was right.

Now, have you read the critique of Roy’s book that I linked? Anyone who has ever taken a statistics class ought to be able to understand it, and the criticisms are quite clear and well documented. Roy says he won’t be responding. Would you read those criticisms and see whether I’m exaggerating when I say that Roy was clearly wrong in that particular modeling effort? I just find it incredible that he’s pretending he has only been clearly demonstrated to have been wrong ONCE in his career. The guy is a serial statistics abuser, among other things.

I believe that it is a shameful lack of moral and ethical behavior, to completely ignore the most relevant papers already published that address issues core to your own paper, and not address the issues raised therein. And to couple this with flogging the general public with erroneous statements and commentary is disgusting pandering to a political position.

Then we see the same person put commentary up today on a disinformation site (that he played a key role in setting up), claiming the global anomaly reported by UAH was “down a bit in August”, when in fact it was the third hottest August in his own data base.

Why should anyone believe anything you say, when you elect to ignore or gloss over anything that doesn’t fit your strong overriding political and economic views?

The temperatures on this blog are updated monthly and are always compared to the previous month. Would the title “third warmest on record” change something on the fact that UAH measurements show august was a bit cooler than july this year?

You don’t know what you’re talking about. In any case, why exactly would a journal publish a critique of a book published by some ultra-right-wing press, when Roy said right in the book that some of the work he described was not published because it didn’t pass peer review? Can you see the double standard, here?

Barry,
You don’t understand the concept of gatekeeping, do you? Lots of good papers, correct papers, have been denied publication because of guys like Phil Jones, Michael Mann, Gavin Schmidt and Kevin Trenberth. The “go to town” on a paper with a goal of keeping it from being published so the next IPCC assessment report does not have to discuss it. They are pushing an agenda, not the advancement of science.

Your claim that you found an error is unsubstantiated. You can publish a paper on the topic without it referencing Spencer’s book. Or you could provide a link to a paper which demonstrates Spencer has made an error. Your claims fall short.

CRU Published their raw data a couple of weeks ago. Nothing all that exciting, but as an exercise in MySQL and php, I took all of their raw data and plotted it.

The gray dots are the raw data.
the Red dots are the GISS anomaly data plotted on top of the raw data.
The Orange dots represent the simple mean of the raw data.
The black dots on the bottom represent the volume of points for each month (I divided by 20 to make it fit the same scale).

The Orange means are 4px x 4px so they can be seen better.
The raw data is 1px X 1px. The more stations reporting the data the darker the point.

Attempting to look at the forest. Looking at it this way, the GISS anomaly data seems to be perfectly reasonable.

Also perfectly reasonable is my attitude that I am not going to worry about CO2 or global warming..

To Obscurity and friends.. What are the units you should use when doing radiation calculations? (This is why I chose the scale I did).

I’m not a climatologist or anything remotely like it. Nor am I familiar with the arcana of scientific journalism. However, on the straightforward level of appearances, I was shocked that the editor would resign in this circumstance. Okay, maybe the Spencer article is subject to criticism. I thought that’s what “peer review” was all about. If the science is bad, then refute it with good science. What’s the big deal??? If the Spencer article was so bad, why wasn’t it retracted? Another thing, is anyone else suspicious of the warm and supportive words for the “disgraced” editor? “He did the honourabe thing.” Really? What is the bet he gets a good job following this for “falling on his sword”?

Spencer essentially got the paper published by carefully ignoring previous work relevant to his own work, but contrary to his findings, followed by withholding and keeping this past work from being reviewed and assessed by the editors. They in turn, were denied the opportunity to carry out their own job responsibilities, because without this information they didn’t have the full scope of options with respect to selection of appropriate reviewers for the article.

And if the case is so air tight then perhaps Trenbeth could publish a paper refuting Roys?

You and I both know this will NEVER happen because that would require KT to actually read what he is supposed to be shooting down. And if he reads it he might actually come to accept what Roy said…and we cant be having that otherwise the other clowns in the hockey team might kick him out! ðŸ™‚

If what you say is true, then Spencer is an evil man indeed. Are there no professional organizations that can put him on trial for such misconduct and strip him of his credentials? Most professions have such a process. For example, if Spencer was so deliberately deceptive, couldn’t the matter be brought before his university’s ethical standards review process?

And, if the paper was that fraudulent why didn’t the journal retract it?

Have you served as a peer reviewer for major academic journals? I have. The idea that three people who are competent to be peer reviewers failed to pick up the fact that an author failed to address the position of his opponents would serve as a premise for a Seventeenth Century French Farce but the play would never make it to the the stage. In other words, the idea is preposterous.

However, if this preposterous thing actually happened, the responsibility for it lies with the peer reviewers and the journal editor. They passed the article and published it. Dr. Spencer did neither. He merely submitted it to the journal. After submission, he is not responsible for what the journal does with it.

Paul K2 says:
Then we see the same person put commentary up today on a disinformation site (that he played a key role in setting up), claiming the global anomaly reported by UAH was “down a bit in August”, when in fact it was the third hottest August in his own data base.

Paul K2 says:
I think you missed the point: He is pushing disinformation

I think you missed the point: Only you think that is disinformation. So you’re either projecting your own poor reading comprehension on everyone else, or you’re busy trying to spread disinformation yourself. Either way, you’re just making yourself look stupid, so please go on!

Aha! Now I see what this is really about! Your religion is AGW, so naturally you will do or say
the most outrageous things to discredit any faith that does not conform to your own. The very fact that Dr. Spencer is a Christian discredits anything he says. How scientific of you!

Interesting that CERN has published (peer reviewed, as well) an interesting paper that seems to point to the Sun as the primary cause for climate change. One would have thought our relatives in the UK would have been aware of the paper, living so close to Switzerland and all.

I do not know about the physics, but I think you have a great script here. Dr. Spencer has the role of the rogue scientist who must be silenced. Anonymous insults and threats of ruin and other harm bombard him from a vast and obscure conspiracy within and outside the government and a previously unknown but easily intimidated editor realizes what he is up against and resigns to save his career and to save who knows what else. The rest of this script involves politicians, scientists who receive huge bribes in the form of honorariums, secret emails, vast fortunes to be made or lost and a shocking story that has nothing to do with legitimate science. I think I will call the story “Global Warming”.

The editors trusted Dr. Spencer to be honest and act in good faith. Instead he played them for chumps. Isn’t there a story about a snake and a woman, and after the snake fatally bites the woman, she asks why?

And the snake replies: “Well you knew I was a snake!”

For those who don’t get it, the editor is the woman, and the snake is…

Dr. Spencer you are not the only one who does not take Obscurity seriously. He is the sort of illogical troll, and there are many of them on sites like yours, who get their kicks from imagining they understand the science after reading those climate scientists that suit their activist bias.

Here in Australia there are well credentialed climate scientists who are presenting papers that question the validity of the IPCC claim that climate change is primarily driven by human activity or is even significant viz temperature driving present increasing natural CO2 concentrations and measured sea level rises. What is new is this is happening without the interference from the IPCC cabal, some of whom masquerade as climate scientists but mostly are activists from disciplines like sociology and even psychology.

In the last few days, believe it or not one of these “experts” gives his support to a paper linking mental illness with human induced climate change. Much in the same vein I notice the craven editor-in-chief, who resigned, is concerned that you did not account for melting arctic ice (another science journal editor who is clueless on the history of weather events that occurred when CO2 concentrations were at about pre-industrial levels).

Thank you for challenging the “consensus science” which can only lead to bad political decisions leading to negative economic outcomes when received credulously by politicians as a quasi religious belief system.

–> Wolfgang writes: “The managing editor of Remote Sensing reflected three senior scientists from renowned US universities, each of them having an impressive publication record. Their reviews had an apparently good technical standard and suggested one “major revision”, one “minor revision” and one “accept as is”. The authors revised their paper according to the comments made by the reviewers and,
consequently, the editorial board member who handled this paper accepted the paper (and could in fact not have done otherwise). Therefore, from a purely formal point of view, there were no errors with the review process.

Ok. Peer review appears to have been done with integrity, authors complied with comments and made appropriate revisions.

So what’s wrong?

–> Wolfgang writes: The problem is that comparable studies published by other authors have already been refuted in open discussions and to some extend also in the literature (cf. [7]), a fact which was ignored by Spencer and Braswell in their paper and, unfortunately, not picked up by the reviewers.

Huh? Isn’t it his duty then to recommend a retraction of the paper? Alternately if there’s merit to this argument he could have published a Comment refuting S&B in his publication.

The very fact that a retraction wasn’t issued by the publication suggests that there was no merit to this line of argument and that this was a political statement based upon some type of pressure from parties who don’t like it when observations aren’t cherry picked to match their models.

No. The resignation is because the editor realizes he didn’t do his job properly, when placed trust in Dr. Spencer to act as a professional, then got blind-sided when Dr. Spencer didn’t fill him in properly.

Excuse me, but the peer reviewers were all researchers who have actually published on the subject of climate sensitivity. The editor is no expert, and virtually none of the critics of the paper have published on the same subject. I would wager the editor did not even read the paper himself…otherwise he would not have made the absurd claim that we did not address the views of our opponents, when in fact that was what the paper was about!

It seems to me that the editor made a case against the powers that wanted the paper retracted. I read him as saying that he was beaten black and blue and resigned to stop the pain. Of course, he might not be the most astute editor of all time.

How about this for a conspiracy theory… Editor gets pressure to resign because of too much publicity for paper. Refer Rabbetts red flag. Resign pressure gets unbearable. Editor must resign. Editor has ethics so resigns in such a way that maximum publicity is given to resignation and to the paper.

Drs Spencer and Braswell’s paper’s abstract concludes: “It is concluded that atmospheric feedback diagnosis of the climate system remains an unsolved problem, due primarily to the inability to distinguish between radiative forcing and radiative feedback in satellite radiative budget observations.”

It seems to me that this conclusion is soundly supported by the paper. In the above comments I have not detected an attempt to refute this conclusion. Christopher Game

If it is Kevin T, then good he actually feels the need to debate with you, let him. If you are right and he is wrong you will win. At least on your own forum, were you will not be edited out, you have a fair chance.

Kevin T if you read this, the look ahead and see how history will understand your legacy! 1930’s Germany springs to mind!

“In hindsight, it is possible to see why the review process of the paper by Spencer and Braswell did not fulfill its aim. The managing editor of Remote Sensing selected three senior scientists from renowned US universities, each of them having an impressive publication record. Their reviews had an apparently good technical standard and suggested one “major revision”, one “minor revision” and one “accept as is”. The authors revised their paper according to the comments made by the reviewers and, consequently, the editorial board member who handled this paper accepted the paper (and could in fact not have done otherwise). Therefore, from a purely formal point of view, there were no errors with the review process.”

Why do people who write the snide and cynical remarks write using pseudonyms? I don’t know a great deal about science but I do understand honest debate when people identify themselves and take a point of view and argue for it.

I am old and getting older and have a pretty good BS detector. Based upon my experience and my knowledge of human beings, any man or woman who will not argue under their own name is probably not worth considering. It is childish and more is expected of people who are educated.

I was just passing through and reading all this, I am not a scientist but I have been able to read folks fairly well in this life of mine. I see the same sort of thing happening that I used to experience on the college campuses in the seventies and early eighties. If a conversation was started at the communism table in the student common area and those for communism did not like what you were saying they would simply shout you down and try to drive you away. I saw this described in the Chilling Stars (by Henrik Svensmark & Nigel Calder) when it was described how they were invited to a dinner (unbeknownst to them it was really planned as an event to belittle them and mock their research and ideas.) That’s all I have to say about that.
I do have a question I was hoping someone could answer.
Why do the reduce CO2 folks hate the earth’s flora with such intensity. Here’s why I say this. The flora of our planet breathes this why do they want to suffocate it?

Theo Goodwin says:
September 2, 2011 at 11:01 am
“In other words, the problem I see with the paper by Spencer and Braswell is not that it declared a minority view (which was later unfortunately much exaggerated by the public media) but that it essentially ignored the scientific arguments of its opponents. This latter point was missed in the review process, explaining why I perceive this paper to be fundamentally flawed and therefore wrongly accepted by the journal.”

Somebody put the fear of Gaia in old Wolfgang. Imagine that: three reviewers missed the fact that the paper “ignored the scientific arguments of its opponents.” I guess those three reviewers must be first year graduate students, right? But Wolfgang elaborates on the point in his letter as follows:

“The use of satellite data to check the functionality of all sorts of geophysical models is therefore a very important part of our work. But it should not be done in isolation by the remote sensing scientists. Interdisciplinary cooperation with modelers is required in order to develop a joint understanding of where and why models deviate from satellite data. Only through this close cooperation the complex aspects involved in the satellite retrievals and the modeling processes can be properly taken into account.”

Now, this is a truly novel step in the history of science and the history of peer review. Data that contradicts some model cannot be accepted for publication in an article whose authors are not modelers because only modelers understand the “complex aspects” involved in “modeling processes.” In plain English, what this means is that data that contradicts model results must be pre-approved by approved modelers before it can be submitted for publication.

So, in the case of this one journal, it is clear as a bell that modelers have succeeded in suppressing all criticism of their work that is based on data. You must think about this for a while and let it sink in. It is a clear, robust, and successful example of some scientists acting to suppress criticism of their work. If you had any doubt that publication in climate science has been corrupted by power, then you have clear evidence to remove that doubt.

Of course, Wolfgang’s description of position taken by modelers undermines their argument for rejecting Spencer’s work. The burden lies on the modelers to state for all to see the “complex aspects” that data folk cannot understand and to explicate them in the context of scientific method. The number one sin of modelers is that they refuse to explicate their work in the context of scientific method and insist on treating each of their models as the product of a unique and new genius who cannot be understood by the unwashed Phds, but who must be treated as absolute authority. (My guess is that Wolfgang shares my view of the matter; otherwise, the points would not be so clear in his resignation letter.)

While I’m a Gorean global warming skeptic, I’m also a blogger. And I think Roy makes a huge political mistake when he bans people who are trying to dispute his findings. That only gives them undeserved credibility and satisfaction.

Let your critics say all they want. Take them on, and let others take them on. If they’re wrong, it will be clear to readers. If they’re not, learn from their input. Science is supposed to be a learning process. As a non scientist, I’m amazed at the petty comments by Spencer’s critics. But as a retired editor and publisher, I’m not at all surprised that the peer review process is so political and corrupt.

Obviously, the “climate change” crowd wanted Spencer to submit to their journal so that his piece would have been rejected as standard operating procedure.

Gorean politics has undermined not only climate scientists, but all scientists, imho. We don’t know whom to believe any more. As a long-time fan and supporter of modern science, I find that very sad.

Well Salvatore, surely “As I have said the only thing that matters is who is right and who is wrong.” shows what you really care about. A true scientist pursues the truth; it is the truth that matters, not _who_ is right and _who_ is wrong.

The problem with Mr. Spencer is two-words: “Bad science”. I can think of several other two word phrases, such as “Self servings”, “paid schill”, “climate denier”, etc.

But no matter, none of these terms mean anything in today’s world, not even honest-to-god “bad science”.

The facts surrounding climate change are well-established by credible scientists and researchers around the world. They are almost entirely in agreement world wide on its causes. But along comes another “scientist” who claims something else and then whines and cries when he’s rejected by his peers.

Well stupid, that’s what the process IS all about, so that credible science is held accountable — including those that claim to be practicing it.

You’ll get no sympathy from me, I’ve seen too much of this idiocy from the denialsphere to even care anymore.

Great work and from what I have seen from the attacks on your work, Great Defense! It doesn’t seem anyone is able to dispute your claims, but only make non-science backed attacks against you. Keep up the good work. I have always been a skeptic of man-made climate change and your work reassures what I have begun to see. This will eventually go down as one of the biggest hoaxes in all of history. Let’s just hope its before we all kill each other for… being alive…

I have re-read the paper by yourself and your co-author just to make sure I have not missed anything. I find it has significant merit and found no significant errors other than the fact that it questions the dogma of the church of AGW. This is purely a political error, not a scientific error.

If you don’t mind I will quote your paper here, you wrote;

“While there is a substantial time lag between forcing and the temperature response due to the heat capacity of the ocean, the radiative feedback response to temperature is nearly simultaneous with the temperature change.”

Exactly correct in my opinion. I believe this accurately describes the “speed of heat” which is a very important consideration in how any thermal transfer mechanism works.

Ironically in my opinion the “GHE” actually causes slightly more energy to flow through the climate system at the much faster speed of light. I posit that this causes the gases in the atmosphere to warm and/or cool slightly faster than if the “GHE” was not present. Of course I am a crackpot who does not have my whole career tied up in the faith of “AGW”.

This is well understood by engineers working in the field of heat transfer and can be manipulated (within the limits of available materials) to improve the performance of a system.

I am most troubled by the following quote from the resignation letter of the editor in question;

“Interdisciplinary cooperation with modelers is required in order to develop a joint understanding of where and why models deviate from satellite data.”

This is a nice way of saying that the models are SUPREME, and everybody has to help improve the models.

I feel that the models are (edited out in the name of good taste) and should be RIPPED UP.

Keep up the good work, and always remember “non-carbarondum bastardi”, the truth will come out.

Most of you are missing the point. The reason Eli, Chris, Barry, the Weasel and others have come here is that there remains residual respect for Roy Spencer, and a lot of unhappiness with the stuff he is emitting, esp. the leveraging in the popular press.

“The facts surrounding climate change are well-established by credible scientists and researchers around the world.”

Well, there are lots of other “well-established scientific facts”;

1 – Ulcers are caused by stress and spicy foods

2 – Lobotomies’ are a useful treatment for mental disorders (Somebody won a Nobel Prize for “perfecting” the lobotomy)

3 – “Cold Fusion” exists in our laboratory

I could go on but I suspect other examples would be lost on you.

The dustbin of history is overflowing with “scientific facts” that were “well-established”. Luckily the truth eventually worms it way to the surface and HYPOTHESIS (i.e. the AGW supposed “crisis”) are discarded.

Have you identified a specific mistake/flaw/error/mis-understanding in Dr. Spencer’s and his co-authors work ?

The computer models offered by the IPCC predicted that the heat transfer was “X”

The actual observed heat transfer was significantly different than “X”

At the end of the day, that is all that matters. If a prediction does not match observation, then the prediction is wrong.

If the weatherperson said that there was a 100% chance that a particular region would see rain today, and that region didn’t, there would not be an outcry about how simplistic the observations happened to be.

Dr Spencer is simply stating that the NASA Satellite is observing no rain despite the IPCC predictions.

In the mean time, the IPCC defenders are stating that the observations are too simplistic to be believed.

It has been very instructive to witness in this thread the tactics of the IPCC’s professional assassination squad (including the junior US cheersquad of Bickmore, Colese, etc, and the pseudonyms in the political wing) sent after the man they fear the most.

Good grief. In my field (digital signal processing) I believe it’s fairly common practice to add minor mistakes to published work so that anyone who actually wants to make use of the technology will be motivated to pay for it to work right. (Results should be legit, but techniques might be obfuscated.) The point being that, for what I’m used to, peer review is cursory at best. I published about 5 times in college, I reviewed once, and being unable to reproduce the work in question, went on to prove that it was actually false. I was given the impression that such diligence was unusual, not necessarily appreciated, and was never asked to review again.

Now, obviously our fields are quite different, with mine being both profitable and a-political. But the idea that an editor-and-chief would resign because the peer-review process is imperfect — that’s bizarre. (Not addressing the science here). I also have trouble believing that stretching a journal to include somewhat off-topic papers is frowned upon. I’ve always had the opposite impression.

It’s speaks very poor of Roy Spencer when he bans somebody for actually arguing the science and suspecting that he’s debating with an actual climate scientist.

It’s too bad there’s not a place for open debate among scientists without the protagonists being in charge of the admin buttons — or maybe there is, but the scientists would rather fight it out on their own blogs?

RULE 12: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.” Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people and not institutions; people hurt faster than institutions. (This is cruel, but very effective. Direct, personalized criticism and ridicule works.)

Interested readers prefer straightforward science, but both sides on your paper are political. Politics can be best redressed with facts.

If CO2 is the culprit, then its percentage in the atmosphere ought to be the focus.

In looking at the Maona Loa CO2 charts over the years, I have always been surprised to see that the annual shortfall of CO2 absorption year over year averages only about 1 to 2%.

It is not a difficult problem to increase vegetation by this amount globally to check the increase, as an interim solution.

A 3% increase in the vegetation absorption would begin a reversal of the trace gas amount.

If only a small amount of the scientific analysis effort were spent on the actual problem ( switching to 40% ethanol for fuel for one example) rather than trying to corner the brokerage fees for GHG taxation, there would be no controversies such as we now see here.

I don’t remember the last time an editor resigned over a particular paper, whatever the subject. For example, no one resigned over all of the bogus proxy papers that sailed through various doctrinaire journals after refereeing by the same incestuous group of mutually–referring climate boys.

Peer review does not require that a paper be “right;” it must adhere to the established and understood process, and if it passes muster, it becomes part of the debate. The advocates are out to subvert this process.

There were musings in some of the ClimateGate emails about getting rid of the editor GRL who had “allowed” publication of skeptics papers, but nothing of sort has happened until now. This is asymmetric science warfare.

Doctor Spencer, Evil should always be exposed whether it is a corrupt scientific community in the pocket of the Atheists or the utter hypocrisy of our American political system or leadership within The Body of Christ. I am excited to see the hysteria gushing from the left wing propagandist ringing the cracked warning bell, “The Christians are coming”! A more precise exclamation is: “Jesus is Coming, Repent and believe the Gospel”.

Scientists are sometimes forced to choose between free speech and how that speech (if it purports to be scientific) is constrained by data and reasonable interpretation. Newton certainly would have been “free” to state that gravity must push things away from the sun and moon and other orbital masses into the Earth; but it would have been silly. There is little room for hyperbole in science – that is, if one wants to maintain credibilty.

Dr. Spenser has a strong and very public interest in promoting the idea that his god controls the destiny of the world, and that humanity is its steward. It is not hard for me to consider that this worldview taints his interpretation of scientific facts.

I hope that this comment will be seen as the simple statement of an easily verifiable fact.

bob wardesque deflections aside, Mr. Colose, the publication that Dr’s. Spencer and Braswell published in was exactly the right one to send the paper to.

{“As I stated in my
editorial at the launch of this new open access journal [6] one of the premier goals of remote sensing as
a discipline is to better understand physical and biological processes on our planet Earth. The use of
satellite data to check the functionality of all sorts of geophysical models is therefore a very important
part of our work.”}

Let’s see, remote sensors used – check

comparing to some type of model – check

model’s functionality does not correspond with the remote sensing data – Check

Ergo the perfect journal for this paper.

Try just once Mr. Colose to man-up and accept that your view is not the only view that has merit.

Carbon Dioxide is the holy gas of the adherents of the “Humans are evil and cause warming” religion. It is indeed unprecedented for an Editor to resign because of a paper that was published. What is really slimy is that the editor now claims the paper was all wrong (or whatever).

The real problem is that the religious fanatics are finding that they cannot sell their wares to the public (and a growing fraction of the scientific establishment) – they tried to hide the decline and were caught – they did everything in their power to stop people from asking questions – “if you do not believe us, you all are deniers and like Holocaust deniers and racists” – they are increasing the ante … They are getting desperate – and here comes Roy Spencer (and Braswell) publishing a paper that forces people to stand up and think – examine what they have written and follow the scientific method – Spencer and Braswell have committed the unforgivable sin – forcing a discussion on issues the religious fanatics have tried to hide …

Good for you Spencer and Braswell … Science IS about point and counter point –

I hope you enjoy the possibilty to get our contrarian comments published. And Im sure you are not embarrassed by using an opportunity you dont give your critics at your isolated tribal RELCLIMATE.

The Difference between you and Roy Spencer is that his a real man and he doesnt run and hide like you guys. hes competent and therfore secure in himself. You lack that and Im sorry for you and its a pity that you have to use the covards atrategy to try to meka a point. Even though you have all the political steroids availeble your still loosing. Not even IPCC can help you to shield your incompetence and corruption.

Roy! You look like a solid rock in comparence. You know we are many who supports you and you have shown a remarceble
patience moral and intergity even if you have been attacked in the most horrific dihonest way by the CAGWmob. You are winning not onlly as a scientist. You are winning as a person as well.

The three namned guys commenting here on your blogg has lost everthing you still own. Keep it up!

All of this is irrelevant since the man-made advocates will simply adjust their science and their responses when it becomes clear the planet is not warming, and they will say their wonderful industry-choking efforts to foster regulations to counter global warming have paid off. I expect to see lots of back-slapping, self-congratulating, etc.

I am rather appalled at the puerile material in the comments, and from Roy Spencer himself. When I was a teenager, I saw the other kids “arguing” (shouting at each other), and believed that adults facing real problems in the world would be more mature about it. You know, engage in rational conversations that were more about ideas then about sides.

It is a sad indictment on the climate change debate that a Wagner’s resignation is interpreted as some sort of proof of conspiracy. The guy was very clear that he took issue with Spencer’s (and others) press-release exaggerations of the significance of the work, and also that he felt that the peer review process was corrupted.

There are conspiracy theorists on both the political left as well. 9/11 conspiracy theorists come to mind. Nothing can convince someone who has already made their mind up, and that is just plain immature and adolescent.

You’re confused. Dr. Spencer didn’t try to hide the decline, he doesn’t threaten to punch anyone, he doesn’t even act like a spoiled child looking to blackball a peer scientist that offers dissenting scientific opinions. You seem to have Dr. Spencer confused with some other climate scientists.

As for the adult, calm and rational approach you seek, well that all evaporated with some nut claiming the debate was over and the science was settled skeptics are Nazis and racists, etc. Have you been on a different planet and just returning?

Wow! So this is the scientific process.. After reading this thread I can only conclude that scientists are
the nutty professors and whiny geeks everyone thought they
were.. Grow up people — if u disagree with the paper
– review/research/refute it —
He said/She said only works in chick flicks.

I do know that the reaction to it is not the reaction I’d expect from serious scientists.

Poor papers are published all the time, most published papers turn out to be in error in some way or other over the fullness of time.

But this doesn’t mean they shouldn’t have been published or that it was wrong to publish them – its the nature of the beast and the scientific method that ideas are put to the test and are often found wanting.

So when I see the sort of hysterical reaction that this paper has attracted – I am, shall we say, suspicious of the motivation of the critics who do not want some ideas put to the test but rather have the suppressed.

Reading these comments has been very eye openning. Watching “scientists” attack anyone who dares to critcize their work or anyone who publishes criticism is very scary.
It is easy for lay people to be confused when they don’t know climate science or the peer review process.
How many of those who support man-made global warming do not believe in absolute truth? and therefore the facts are irrelevant.

Roy, isn’t it true that the journal, Remote Sensing, is a “for profit” journal? If that is true, wouldn’t you presume that the Editor and or the Journal were acting in what they perceived to be the best economic interest of the journal? You should take solace in knowing that “the market” decided.

I heard about the FOIA file that someone inside the CRU released to the public and downloaded it.

Several things in that file stuck out as decidedly non-science.

The first are the contracts between the CRU and the IPPC. They read like software development contracts the create “deliverables” on “milestone” dates. Being paid to “prove” AGW and deliver that “proof” when, in fact, one does not create experiments to prove hypothesis, but to test their veracity.

The second item that appeared like a sore thumb was the “HARRY_README.txt” file. It is a smoking gun on data falsification, mishandling, manipulation and even creating data out of thin air. Being so willing to fabricate data to “prove” AGW is arrogance elevated to the level of faith.

The third item I noticed was the tone of the 1,072 emails that were in the file. Al Gore, in a CNN interview, tried to dismiss their significance by claiming that they were “over 10 years old and inconsequential”. In fact, the most recent emails were dated about a week before the FOIA file was posted on line, establishing that either he had not read the emails or he was lying about their significance. The CNN talking head never questioned Gore or his “facts”, but dutifully fulfilled her role as a conduit for AGW propaganda. The emails themselves are full of intrigue and even plans to violate the law and destroy data if FOI requests weren’t derailed. Taken all together, the FOIA file establishes beyond a reasonable doubt that AGW is a hoax motivated by a political agenda. The use of emotionally charged words in order to panic citizens into rash legislation or actions is a hallmark of tyrants. It reminds me of the Lysenko Affair in the USSR, which set Soviet science back 30-40 years and produced a pile of useless “scientific” research because approval and funding of research was controlled by government agencies controlled by Lysenko. Current day climate research parallels the Lysenko Affair in almost lock-step fashion.

When I was doing anti-cancer metabolite research 45 years ago the supporting data was either supplied with the papers or furnished upon request. In those emails are plans by CRU scientists to withhold data, to smear the intelligence and attainments of those who hold differing positions, and even mount campaigns to remove neutral of unsympathetic journal editors, which is apparently what happened in this instance. Equally vile are the plans to stuff the peer-review lists with AGW proponents.

I found rather disturbing the email exchange between a CRU scientist and a GreenPeace activist. It gives credence to those who say that AGW is just another wealth redistribution scheme. The Carbon Credits is the implementation of that scheme.

Who ever he or she is, I am thankful to that CRU whistle-blower who released the FOIA files, and sadly disappointed that the “investigating committees” who white-washed the whole sordid affair. The CRU and those “investigators” have damaged science for a generation or more.

Fascinating. By means of your paper you speak, in essence, in favor of a more rational approach to the problem, directly and logically addressing the shortcomings of specific approaches to the science. You neither refute proven facts nor present unsupported conclusions.

On the face of it, your purpose and effect is to improve the robustness of climate science, not to bias its outcome but to mitigate real and potential bias.

I like what Dr. Spencer has written. I am a broadcast meteorologist and agree with Dr. Roy Spencer, this game of politicing of a natural state of warming of the earth has gone too far. Follow the money and you will find the truth.

Anyone who has ever published in a peer reviewed journal knows that some journals require you to suggest reviewers. I’ve suggested many I’ve know in the past. That is what the journal requirements require and both side of this debate do exactly the same.

In regards to claim of public media exaggeration, the IPCC and anthropogenic climate change scientists have had a monopoly on hype (and still do) for a decade. Not a day goes by without a media release extrapolating results to the destruction of civilization itself. Many of these claims are dead wrong and yet there is no Wagner resigning over them.

3) The only seemingly noteworthy argument I found in the entire letter was in regards to the claim that Dr Spencer ‘ignored the scientific arguments of its opponents.’

Yet, I see no further details in the letter to substantiate any of this. I eagerly await Wolfgang Wagner’s rebuttal publication with great anticipation. And that is the point…that is how it should be done in science. Not via this childish political stunt which attempts to put censorship pressure on a journal.

The models say the system response to more CO2 is a positive feedback which is likely to lead to catastrophic consequences requiring a complete reordering of global civilisation to avoid those consequences.

Lots of evidence is accumulating to suggest that in reality it is heavily negative.

Roy’s paper gently points out that natural variations in cloudiness and ocean behaviour (not currently taken into account in the models) would frustrate attempts to establish the sign of any feedback process anyway.

Although I can’t say I agree with your points (and find myself agreeing even less with the rather bizarre antics of the anti-climate change mob), I am thoroughly enjoying your blog and the discussion on it. Keep up the good work!

What I find most troubling is that it is obvious to even non-scientists that the world is burning huge amounts of fossil fuels every day, and has been doing so for years. Yet you can’t seem to see the forest for the trees. Connect the dots, folks, there really not very far apart. It must have been exactly this way on Easter Island when the fools cut down the last tree that doomed the civilization.

I wonder why everyone is behind this really harmless article (as I see it). Dr. Roy and his colleague are not the first to state that the so-called climate models are grossly wrong. Please find some references which I got when I had to do a presentation on a similar debate on the effects of GW in India, particularly on Indian Monsoon System, some months back:

Sedimentary evidence from Arabian sea representing last 350,000 years indicate that this system has been externally forced by cyclical changes in solar radiation, and internally phase-locked to the transport of latent heat from the southern subtropical Indian Ocean to the Tibetan Plateau (Clemens et al. 1991).
Goswami (2009) said “Projections of monsoon under climate change scenarios by current climate models are not reliable. Because current climate models are unable to simulate the present mean monsoon climate and its variability with fidelity”

79 predictions for 6 IPCC scenarios by 12 different climate models were analyzed by Paeth et al. 2008 and they concluded:
– Large differences between model predictions
– Models tends to project La Niña-like anomalies in the SOI and an intensification of the summer monsoon precipitation in India and West Africa
– This response does not exceed the level of natural variability and the intermodal variability is larger than the impact of different IPCC scenarios.

In my opinion, we should not debate too much on CC, but instead should focus on empowering people to cope with it, if at all something of the magnitude as what is generally claimed is to happen!

What the hell happened to the Precautionary Pinciple, eh? By the time climate change has an obvious, daily impact on people’s lives, which is the only point at which politicians will really start to move, it will be far too late for action.

Yet skeptics and supporters of anthropogenic climate change arguments fall into the same ‘Aye’ or ‘Nay’ rut. In practice, this is not so much about winning a scientific debate but about steering the most sensible path that avoids, based on what incomplete evidence we have today, the potentially large impacts on society.

There is enough basic evidence to suggest man’s activities are likely to have an effect, even if we cannot, with certainty, quantify the extent of that effect.

Those effects are potentially so large and dangerous to society that the ‘third way’ of precaution, moving away from profligate fossil fuel use is the only wise option, no matter which purely scientific rut you want to settle down into.

If we genuinely had no alternative to fossil fuels, we could well justify this turf war. But because we do, we can’t.

John Rowlands
Finalist, BBC Radio 4 Amateur Scientist of the Year 2010.

The game, AGW/Climate Change, is being played for Billions of dollars, if not Trillions of dollars. Politicians currently and in the future hope to extract that money from the public world wide.

It was suggested that there must be something that caused the resignation of the editor to Remote Sensing Journal. I would like to posit that Remote Sensing journal must not be allowed to be considered as a major journal by the public, therefore the AGW gatekeepers are attempting to discredit it by the editorial resignation. They may fear that the current and new Remote Sensing Satellites will be producing “INCONVENIENT DATA” in the future. They are the gatekeepers to their own climate journals, but if the data shows up in the Remote Sensing journal, that journal needs to be viewed as a “discredited” or irrelevant journal. They may fear that the current and new Remote Sensing Satellites will be producing “INCONVENIENT DATA”.

Bottom line: It’s not about the science, it’s about control and it’s about the money.

They view your paper as a threat to their control of the keys to the AGW kingdom.

“global warming alarmism wrongly views the Earth and its ecosystems as the fragile product of chance, not the robust, resilient, self-regulating, and self-correcting product of God’s wise design and powerful sustaining.” ???

This is an excerpt from Cornwall Alliance web site, which list you on the first spot on its list of “Prominent Signers of An Evangelical Declaration on Global Warming” in scientists and medical doctors category. This location is understanable, as you appear to be the only PhD working in climatology on the list…

Anyway, do you believe in that statement above? This may explain a lot!

What other special criteria would you like to employ to determine if a scientist, who is respected and apparently made it through the educational requirements of said science, meets with your satisfaction? Would getting arrested in front of the White House in DC be a good criteria for determining scientific ability? This is great, why don’t we start employing the ideological examination of all people for all jobs if it seems such a good idea to you in this instance?

I work for a hedge fund that tries to predict future prices using models. I am no climate scientist but can tell you that modelling anything complicated is very tricky. Often models fit back data very well and then do not predict the future observations well.

So we all have to be very careful when some people come along and say “Our models predict sea level will rise X amount of feet”. These are models of the future and should not be considered absolute truth.

Any criticism of the models and possible flaws of the models should be looked at carefully and taken seriously. If they are to be refuted then they should be refuted with logic and data.

I agree Roy should not be interpreting his results politically, but at the same time the other side does it to. Hansen was just arrested for protesting outside whitehouse. Which tells me he is too involved personally, and will have trouble separating personal emotions from the science.

It was extrememly upsetting to me to read in an article in a non scientific journal that the fact that the paper was published in a journal not devoted to the field was used to imply that “hey this means the very idea of the paper is no good” I spent 20 years of my life working with university research groups doing in depth bibliographic research for cutting edge federal research grants. Cutting edge implies that the ideas are not mainstream accepted. In the course of my digging up tens of thousands of refereces, I found it was the rule and not the exception that new disputed ideas were not printed in mainstream journals on the topic but it often very obscure journals or journals not known for that topic of research.
Think about it mainstream means generally accepted thinking in a certain field. Peer review in mainstream journals means like minded cohorts.
Also the fact that so much emphasis was put on the fact that the author was CHRISTIAN was also upsetting. All faiths are working in major science; what about it. Is this relevant?? i do not think so; ideally christians are all about truth. Know the truth and the truth will make you free etc. I do not see how the fact the author was christian helps to disprove the paper.

I watched lots of “models” last week with Irene. Pretty much all of them were wrong in predicting anything over 12 hours in advance.

So when a scientist who’s mortgage payment is dependant on predicting gloom and doom associated with man made global warming says ” the science is settled” and the models predict x y and z 10, 20, 50, 100 years into the future , my Bullshit detector starts alarming.

Global warming is an industry. People need it. If there is not problem, the grant dollars go away and people are forced to get real jobs.

from the comments here, I’d say there are many people sucking on the tit of global warming and they are not happy Dr Spencer is calling them out.

I am astounded by what I have read. Since when are we so emotionally attached to particular research and the conclusions of it? Do we not have respect for digging for the truth? Do we not have respect for disagreement?

I think climate research requires a high degree of ethic because politicians all over the world are grasping onto the global warming theory with both hands in order to increase the power of government. Limited government and individual freedom are at serious risk here, and that means that all climate scientists need to act with the highest level of integrity.

Personally, I fear that the hundreds of billions of dollars being poured into climate research is corrupting science, and the vile comments spewed here only feed into that perception. Emotional commitment to a theory shows me the scientist is probably no longer seeking science but a determined outcome that suits him personally. There is more evidence to this corruption, such as the University of East Anglia email leak, Al Gore’s saying polar bears are dying when there are five times more polar bears now than thirty years ago, and the well-reported mistakes of the IPCC in their sources. These are just examples off the top of my head.

This angry verbal lashing of Dr. Spencer is, for me, only more evidence of corruption. I am quite disappointed by the comments here and especially by the use of pseudonyms. Integrity among at least some climatologists is apparently very weak.

It is my expectation that in thirty years, global warming (aka climate change) will be left in the dustbin of history, just like the screaming I heard in elementary school in the 70s about how the next ice age is coming, half of California is going to drop into the ocean, and population density will be so high by the year 2000 that there will not be enough food to feed people. Scientific hysteria lives on but the theories behind it die left and right.

Expecting much more from the scientific community,
Kathy Carlson
Candia, NH

You seem to assume that your Elementary teachers were telling you things that a significant number of scientists were claiming. Hint: elementary teachers are not noted for being especially scientifically literate.

Consider also that you didn’t say a thing about looking into the criticism of Spencer’s work. You think they are mean, so that’s just further proof to you that Spencer must be on the right track. Why not just admit the obvious fact that you aren’t up on the issues enough to tell which argument is right? There’s no shame in that.

Kathy, your response is the most intelligent and cogent in this entire dialogue. You have pointed out precisely what is going badly wrong with the so-called “scientific” enterprise. And, to counter the snide criticism that followed your comment …one need not be a scientist, or an educator in higher education or a researcher within a given field to be able to identify puerile, self-serving, mean-spirited behavior on the part of someone who feels threatened. Thank you for offering a modicum of rationality in an otherwise deteriorating conversation.

“The very fact that the public has the perception that climate change is man-made, when in fact there is as yet no way to know with any level of scientific certainty how much is man-made versus natural, is evidence of that.”

What you present as a reason to assume GW is natural is no such thing.

The honest thing to do is to admit that GW is (a) real, and (b) has a significant link to human activities.

——————

Skeptics claim that AGW is an industry, a money-spinner for scam artists to suck up government cash.

Presumably, then, these same skeptics will also campaign to stop oil and gas companies spending government money prospecting for ever more dangerous reserves?

All this bluster about human vs natural is a smoke screen to hide the fact that, whatever the cause, global warming is real, and a clear, direct threat to large parts of the human race.

All this whining about scams is just covering up the fact that the petrochem companies see an imminent end to their gravy-train, and they want to stop smaller, more flexible companies getting in on the ground floor of the technologies that we need now because the oil is running out now.

Who does Wolfgang Wagner think he is kidding? Read carefully what he says. Is it just me that notices how he contradicts himself in his statement? I think there is more behind his resignation than what he is saying.

Frankly, I believe that the time has come to give up on the ‘peer review process’ as it is currently undertaken. The whole process of assessing scientific papers must change to avoid the perception of bias and preferential treatment. In short, the process is outdated.

The internet is the key to providing a better system of assessing papers. For example:

1. Dedicated websites could be set up within key scientific institutions… where scientists can publish their papers for one and all to see.

2. All papers submitted would be required to be posted on the website, with no exceptions.

3. Experts across the world, invited and otherwise, would then be able to scrutinize the papers, challenge the results, explain why the results are flawed, contact the authors, seek explanations and post their own comments on the paper for one and all to see.

3. The authors would then be able to respond and if necessary revisit their results to correct any errors or whatever. Responses by the authors to the responses to the papers could also be disclosed.

4. After say six months of public exposure, a scientific task force, consisting of known scientists with opposing views, could then determine the merits of the papers, and allowing the papers to be officially deemed ‘peer reviewed’.

Some might well think my idea is dumb. But would it not be a better system than the current system that seems open to abuse and manipulation?

This entire AGW religion has two possible outcomes and is very similar to the McCarthy movement in the 50’s. Either the warmist win and we go into some kind of strange Soviet Union style of system. Or the entire CO2 scare kills itself because it is completely a Hoax. I doubt the first outcome is possible, but if it does happen there will eventually be a revolution that attacks it and kills it. The second outcome is more likely. People like Burt Rutan are now openly attacking the AGW movement as a hoax. More people like me are attacking it as a hoax. This AGW movement is scary.

The one thing I will tell people like Spencer is that you are wasting your time with papers that go through the peer review process. The peer review process is dead. The only hope is the Internet and the grass roots death of AGW. Fortunately the warmists, like McCarthy will eventually kill themselves. If not, then we face the possibility of the Soviet style system here, which I think is unlikely, but even this will eventually implode on itself.

One more note…there is clearly a lot of people that are interested in this. To all those that think this AGW movement is scary, I can say one thing for sure…follow the money.

Someone should research why Wolfgang Wagner resigned. Someone with money pressured him and his board. Who are the people with the money who pressured him? Follow the money and you will see who was behind this. This is all about money. Everything is about money. The AGW warmists do what they do for money. There may be some leftists warmists who really believe, but the core people are just about the money. They are pigs at a trough and they don’t want the food to stop. People like Spencer threaten their trough of food and they will stop at nothing to rid themselves of those that will cutoff the money.

It is important we start capturing names of people who appear to be most behind this AGW scare. These are the people that eventually will go to prison.

I think that someone should contact Senator Inhofe about this whole Wolfgang Wagner affair. He has the resources to “follow the money.” As this AGW creature is now heavily wounded it is going to fight back like a wounded animal. It is then that we will see who is most exposed to getting their funding cutoff. Eventually people like Mann, Jones, and those that supplied the warmist with their “science” will need to go to jail. It is just a matter of time. The others that are using the fake “science” (you can see them as clear warmists on the comments above) will scatter like rats when the AGW hoax is exposed, similar to what many McCarthy supporters did when he was exposed.

Eventually this AGW movement will collapse in on itself. Note that Obama had to pull Ms. Jackson’s EPA bullshit back from the brink or Obama had no chance in 2012.

I have succeeded in turning a lot of common folks onto this AGW bullshit and convincing them it is bullshit by doing the research. Burt Rutan is a good start. As an engineer he can completely destroy the AGW theory. Everyone that reads this blog should look at what Rutan is doing. His latest presentation completely destroys the AGW theory and he has the balls to attack it as a hoax.

After the wall fell in Germany they opened up a lot of secret archives from East Germany and those that were helping spy on their citizens were eventually found out and lost power and influence. The same needs to happen to damn religious warmists.

I do wish we could see some reasoned discussion of the issues relating to global warming without the backbiting and personal criticism. Why does “Obscurity” feel it necessary to adopt the tone he(or she?) does? No other scientific endeavor engenders such weird behavior so far as I know.
I find the muddling of such important questions with offensive rhetoric and spurious assertions is frustrating to say the least. I suggest that it casts doubt on the folks who indulge in it effective and credible scientists.

I’m pretty sure the paper in question was entitled “On the Misdiagnosis of Surface Temperature Feedbacks from Variations in Earth’s Radiant Energy Balance” and that is what it was about. Wolfgang Wagner asserted in his letter of resignation:

“But trying to refute all scientific insights into the global warming phenomenon just based on the comparison of one particular observational satellite data set with model predictions is strictly impossible.”

Does the paper do that? Subsequent press comment may do this but it seems to me that the paper doesn’t. If it doesn’t what is the problem with the paper? Have the results been disputed by demonstrating errors in the paper? If so, where are they published so we can all see them?

The IPCC computer models either model climate accurately or they don’t. The paper suggests that they don’t in at least one aspect, as does the models’ inability to predict historical climate data to any degree. If the models are demonstrably questionable on any basis I suggest they have no credibility in predicting future climate since the validity of the results can be in no way assured.

All this says nothing about climate change and global warming. There is clearly some empirical evidence for warming but so far as I understand, this says nothing about the cause. There seems to be no solid evidence that any warming is man made. If the “science is settled” as they say, let’s see it and get it reviewed dispassionately. Then we can all agree what, if anything we should do about it.

Unfortunately, if it turns out the IPCC models and predictions are wrong, especially about CO2, then huge resources have and are being wasted and people have and are being burdened with substantial unnecessary taxes to no purpose.

The editor’s resignation is the triumph of ideology and politics over science. No doubt Ttrenberth, Mann, Schmidt and others are celebrating the resignation and the political power held by their camp. In my opinion, this gatekeeping and revenge will do more damage to their credibility of global warming than anything. Perhaps the skeptics are the ones who should be celebrating. If this editor will resign over a paper that has not been refuted or withdrawn, then perhaps a stronger editor is exactly what the journal needs.

The editor should have responded to his critics with “Science before politics. If you think the Spencer paper is in error, submit a comment or paper and we will look at it. Until then, we have nothing to discuss.” Perhaps the next editor will have the gumption to do the right thing.

I’m not a scientist – just a concerned lay person — so I don’t pretend to understand the science involved with this issue (although I can easily follow a logical argument). However, I have to agree with many of the other commenters on the shocking attitudes expressed by Dr. Spencer’s critics who have posted here (and Dr. Spencer comes across as a tad thin-skinned, too, for the record)

“Kathy Carlson” made what was an thoroughly intelligent, articulate and well-reasoned comment. She notes she’s not a “scientist” and comments on the tone and attitude of the “scientists” involved in this topic/profession (and I completely agree with her observations)

In response, “Barry Bickmore” (whoever he might be – I gather, a “scientist” in the field) replies with a shrill and contemptuous denunciation of her post. Really? Really? You, sir, are a snot. The tone of your response demonstrates all I need to know about the “science” on the opposite end of this topic. Your posts here remind me of the smart kid in high school whose lack of social skills led to his being ostracized by the other kids. In response, he cuts down the other kids with his supposed “superior” come backs. It drives the other kids even further away and makes him look like an immature jerk. That’s how your posts come across, regardless of the merit of your “science.” By responding to Kathy in that way, you validate the perception that the “settled science” on global warming (…err…’climate change’) is far more emotion-driven than scientific.

There’s no such thing as “settled science” for Pete’s sake! Even I as a layperson know that. History is rife with examples of “settled science” that is later overturned by further research, study, analysis and insights.

Am I concerned about global warming? Somewhat. The extreme weather we’ve had this year has caused vast amounts of human suffering. Is is correlated with a warming earth? Maybe. Is human activity causing that to happen? Maybe. Maybe not. Is it worth trying to send humans back to some level of pre-industrial lifestyle to “stop” it? No. If industrialization and technology got us into this situation, then it will take industry and technology to get us out…not poverty!

But let’s keep it simple. Until I at least see some sort of reasonable explanation from the ‘pro-AGW’ crowd as to how polar bears survived pre-industrial periods of warmth that allowed grapes to be grown in Greenland…then yes, I’m a skeptic/denier/whatever.

The idea that we can only stop “glow-ball vorming” (to quote an unidentified UN official) with massive amounts of government intervention is the one truly horrifying possibility in all of this.

I certainly didn’t mean to be rude to Kathy, although I can see now that I was taking out some of my frustration with Roy on her. Your point about “settled science” has some merit to it, in that even if a theory has become so widely accepted that the whole field moves on, it can always be revisited. But the real question is whether it is “settled enough” to merit taking action based on it. And usually if it’s “settled enough” based on a number of different lines of evidence, scientists are usually quite skeptical when someone pops up with an objection.

In this case, Roy has made a steady stream of claims that he has blown the consensus view out of the water. He’s accused other scientists of being corrupt, lazy, biased, and so on. Is it any wonder that they can get a little testy with Roy? But the real issue is that Roy’s arguments are, in essence, statistical. And yet, he has repeatedly been shown to use bogus statistical methods–and when I say “shown,” I mean there’s no room for doubt, here. Whether his conclusions are ultimately right or wrong, his ARGUMENTS are bogus, and yet these are the arguments he has used to insult his colleagues and damage their reputations among the public. All these criticisms have just rolled off him like water off a duck’s back, as he assures the public (who generally have never taken a course in statistics) that there is no merit to them.

Given this context, can you find it in yourself to be “appalled” at how Roy has treated his colleagues, as well?

4. Makes detailed predictions about future observations that can disprove or falsify the model if they are not born out.

Although climate scientists are indeed tenacious in their attempts to rescue theories they admire, the tendancy to modify a theory fades to the degree that the alterations become atificial or cumbersome,and therefore inelegant.

We need to scrap the AGW models. The models have failed and have little if any predictive qualities. Scientists who have abandoned the scientific method should not be preaching “science” to others.

The IPCC team seems to put way too much emphasis on peer review. Peer review is only the beginning of the process of vetting a body of work. The real vetting goes on in the greater scientific community.

They seem to want peer review to act as a censor of unorthodox opinion. This is unrealistic and wrong. At best peer review is good enough to enforce only minimal standards. Where there is doubt or controversy it must be left with the scientific field as a whole to decide.

In the final analysis whether work is good or bad must rest with the scientific field as a whole. Trying to keep work they don’t agree with censored is taking the wrong tack if its really the science that concerns them.

The idea that a paper must be rejected if previous work contradicts its findings is downright silly.

This business of trying to keep contrary opinions out of print seems to spring directly from the fact that many of these guys are political advocates and they want to deny their political opponents ammunition.

Thanks to the warmists, all climate scientists have now completely lost credibility. There is only one credible non-scientist and non-politician who is attacking the AGW theory as a complete hoax. It is Burt Rutan. He is an engineer and one of the foremost data analytics person is the world. If you don’t know who he is, he need to learn fast. His work will single handedly bring the hoax out into the light. Everyone needs to get behind him. He isn’t a damn scientist doing laboratory work, he is an engineer and has analyzed the data and is strongly coming out saying this whole thing is a hoax.

As Mead and Rutan point out, this isn’t a problem science will solve (ie AGW hoax). It is in the area of public policy and engineering where the hoax will be uncovered. Why you ask?
1. The policies that the AGW hysteria folks want to follow will bankrupt us and are unreasonable.
2. Engineers actually build and test things. Scientists just play with things. Engineers will bring this hoax into the open.

I am a forensic psychologist, Roy, somewhat familiar with science and human beings. Of course, you can dismiss any input from me consequent to my lack of professional expertise in climate science; and so I’ll refrain from offering any opinion about AGW, etc. I would, however, like to offer a couple of observations from my area of expertise.

1) You appear to be somewhat acquainted with the facets of philosophy known as informal logical fallacies. I think, however, that you apply them capriciously and incorrectly. The terms straw man and red herring actually do refer to somewhat formally defined aspects of thinking. Lanham’s (1991) book, “A hand list of rhetorical terms” would be a nice addition to your shelf, but I’d point out that such rhetoric is the antithesis of scientific methodology and does not belong in science discourse.

2) The tone of your remarks bears the signature of contempt and condescension that so often stirs rationality into a froth of gibberish. I overhear conversations using this tone most often in groups of undergraduates who demonstrate an inability to understand what they don’t know. Their arguments divert legitimate challenge, and continue in a unwavering direction regardless of Type I and II errors accumulating like burrs in their socks during a stroll through a September pasture. They also are inclined to misidentify fallacies.

3) As a health care professional, I am somewhat familiar with the work of the Geo Marshall Institute, with whom I understand you are affiliated. The Institute is widely recognized as having delayed acceptance of the link twixt tobacco and lung cancer, and they did this using the same gadfly methodology as climate skeptics are using today. The Institute’s deliberately oppositional actions re tobacco have contributed to millions of human deaths, and so any work done for them or with them must be viewed with great caution. In delaying action on climate change, they risk magnifying the wake of their immoral behavior by an enormous factor.

4) It is awkwardly true that science is not “settled”, but to say that phrase with a straight face is difficult for a scientist. The redundancy is simply too obvious to ignore. Science, by its very nature, is nourished by perpetual instability and revisions. Settled science is an oxymoron, mostly.

You start from the assumption, taken from other authorities since you can’t evaluate the science yourself, that Spencer is incorrect and then provide us with what is nothing more than a careless and long-winded slander on stilts.

Gentlemen: I am geologist who lived in Anchorage, Alaska for much of my professional life. All the soil textures and surrounding geomorphic features prove that Anchorage was under many hundreds of feet of ice during the last glacial maximum–perhaps as late as 10,000 years before present.

I am grateful for non-anthropomorphic global warming. Otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to live in Anchorage. My house on Rabbit Creek Road would have been under at least 1,000 feet of ice in the geological “yesterday.” Stop all the moaning and groaning about climate change. It is a natural process that has occurred throughout the lifetime of our home planet.

By the way–I have now proven that similar glaciation occurred in the southwestern United States of Arizona, Utah, and Nevada during early Pleistocene time, about 1.5 Million Years Before Present. The trouble is, I can’t get the local desert rat geologists to even look for it. They “know” that glaciers never made it down the slopes into the valleys, and won’t go with me to see the evidence. Human nature always rules scientific arguments.

Kiteman, I may not be an expert on climate, but I know one heck of a lot about the oil industry and the state of oil reserves – and you clearly do not. There have been claims of a looming oil supply collapse for as long as I can remember – yet we have more reserves now than ever. For anyone to claim that oil is imminent danger of running out is simply not paying attention. In the meantime 85% – 85%! – of energy consumption in the US is carbon-based. Almost all of the rest is nuclear and hydro, equally reviled by environmentalists. If you and people like you have your way, and return us to the energy consumption levels of the 1840’s and an idyllic age that never existed, at least we’ll have one consolation – we’ll no longer be able to afford the salaries of climate scientists and they’ll have to find a real job, hopefully shoveling horse manure since that’s what they’re the most experienced at.

I don’t claim to be a climate expert in any way, but when I sit back with friends and talk about this we all say, why can’t the CAGW crowd engage in meaningful discussion? They immediately pounce on an idea contrary to theirs as wrong and when the facts are pointed out very explicitly they moan and wail till they can get what they want. This is how the public views the CAGW crowd we just don’t believe them anymore. Also when they outrageously claim all contrary research is funded by big oil what gives? They have no proof and when we get proof one of their own articles had a lead author who was from greempeace and their view received front and centre attention from the IPCC we aren’t allowed to cry foul? Sitting back as a layman I begin to wonder about the CAGW scientists they come off to me as childish.

Reminds me of long term memory deficit afflicted bears all abuzz about the coming of fall and whether bear berry eating is causing Ursusanthropogenic Global Fall. (UGF)

When some bear brings up the inconvenient idea that he’s pretty sure that “global fall” happens every year – no matter how many berries bears eat, a bunch of bears agree with him and a bunch of bears don’t.

Some of the bears carry right along arguing, with hardly a moment’s hesitation. They lose sight of the scale of the subject’s effect and focus on who is right and who is wrong.
These bears develop stress related diseases and bad attitudes and live a cold lonely life.

Most of the bears carry on with their family and lives, eat to get fat, get sleepy and take a long naps till Spring.

Fascinating discussion. Clearly no real evidence for AGW, or more accurately, if we humans have warmed things up, it has only slowed the coming of the next ice age by a bit. Throw a random dart at the last 2 million years and you have a 90% chance of being in an ice age.

As a scientist, I can only conclude the editors resignation was politically caused.

Why anyone who claims to be a scientist would fudge data to avoid having a hypothesis or theory disproved is worse than unethical, it is the act of self-serving cowards. The basic operational purpose of a theory is to show you where your predictions are wrong so we can improve them.

These ‘ad hominem’ artists who showed up for this discussion can not possibly be scientists, although some of them claim to be. Your words are deeds that speak for you = not interested in the truth.

We may be facing a real climate change test very soon, the BP well Macondo is re-leaking with an exponential increase in the leak rate.
See http://www.no1stcostlist.com for more info.

I would be very interested in a climate model that shows how a massive oil based firestorm in the Gulf lasting at least three months, the smoke from which would completely block the Sun from Earth’s surface for six months would affect us.

1. Would we be ale to breathe surface air a thousand miles from Gulf, or would we have to breath through filters.

2. Food, since this would kill all vegetation and surface and sea large life forms, what do we eat?

3. How long before the atmosphere clears up. A large asteroid strike probably had similar effects.

Your my first off N1CL site posting on this matter. It has to be said first somewhere. Let it be another wrong prediction, but we need to model it fast please.

I’m here because I noticed this story is #1 on the BBC News site. Congratulations!!!!

Just had to do a quick search around to get some background. I like the BBC but their “Science and Environment” (an odd combination) sucks as it is appears more a propaganda machine. They certainly got you in their sites with their associations of religion, politics etc. They certainly know all the tricks, I feel for you.

I’m no scientist but can offer that I have experienced similar attacks in the business world. If you are on your own (without public relations arm) this is very hard and my advice would be not to attack back in anyway. Their main line of attack will be to discredit you and gourde you into making this mistake. Hold your ground and keep your friends and love ones close for support.

Explain why you despicably tried to have this published in journal that has almost nothing to do with this topic?

You are a pathetic, stupid, lying fraud and only serve to give a bad name and further the stereotypes of your evangelical kind. Academia is in a sad state indeed when people as incredibly stupid idiots like you manage to obtain PhDs.

I do love how you attempt to mock the engineer for being outside of your field though. As if geomatic engineers have no business with the geosciences, nope.

Let us assume AGW is real. The question is what are humans doing to cause it and what percentage of the global warming is caused by those activities.

My problem is the models assume 100% is due to burning of fossil fuels. The only explanation by AGW proponents is they examined everything else and they could not find the reason the earth is warming so it must be human beings. Then they argue it must be human beings because that is what the models show. It seems to me to be circular logic.

No where do they state it could be changes in land use (ie agriculture, urban sprawl and reservoirs that are putting more water into the air). They always use feedbacks, but never use water vapor as the primary driver for AGW with the others being ancillary.

The next issue I have is that there is this belief that humans are unable to adapt or animals are unable to adapt. This maybe true of some animals, but the majority of animals have a wide range that exceeds the changes caused by global warming predictions. The sad thing is humans inhabit successfully and sustainably almost every clime except antarctica.

We then have people who try to show off easter island, but seem to ignore that North America and Europe have seen an increase in tree cover over the last 50 years. It is a bad example unless we are much more heavily populated than we are now with a much higher density and lack the technology to use alternative sources of materials (ie plastic vs. wood). It also does not help that over 100 years you might see water rise if you live on the coast despite the fact your ancestors will move away for economic opportunity more than climate change.

What really chafes me is instead of looking for greater energy efficiency and power generation we try to control people and then use funds to support those who are most irresponsible. We will take money from Europeans and North Americans to give to poor countries who are highly corrupt and in many cases dicatorships so they can adapt. No where does it state that rich countries expect good governance?

So if you believe in global warming and that it is a major threat then why isn’t there a huge push for Fusion power research which would be able to supply people with a clean renewable energy and provide helium as a resource? Why are these advocates of AGW pushing for redistribution of wealth, suppression of dissension, a lower standard of living with the least reliable and most expensive alternative energy sources?

Dr. Spencer,
my cheers and congratulations on felling Dr. Wagner (of “Remote Sensing”) with your staggering piece of science. Well done, I’d daresay in a “heavenly mighty stroke”.
Then why bothering about “scientific” journals at all, and their snobbish editors/referees. We the People, do not read them. We jeer and sneer at their “scientific truth”. We crave for better knowledge – the BIG TRUTH revealed in biblical writings, that you’re so good at delivering in your many publications.
Many thanks.

SB11 has now been elevated to stratospheric proportions in the blogosphere and publicity in media has already begun too. There is just no way that this can be left to play out through an unbiased peer review process anymore, because that would not guarantee that peer review status is retracted, and there is no other option for the team but to get the paper retracted, right? So was the resignation kabuki theater to pave the way?

As I see it the team must get SB11 retracted. There is just no other option for the team to protect their turf. Anyone see it differently?

Yes, the arctic ice is melting. The glaciers are also melting. I suspect that this has been happening for millennia since the first snow fell.
If I remember my grade school science correctly, glaciers and ice packs are formed due to more snow falling each winter then what is able to melt in the summer. If you want the glacier to grow, slow down the melt by colder air and/or increase the snow fall. If you want the glacier to recede, heat up the air for a faster melt (global warming) or decrease the winter snow fall (climate change). An additional factor appears here. If the snow fall is insufficient to prevent all of the previous winter’s accumulation melting down to the cryoconite layer, the rate of melt accelerates due to decreased reflection of heat radiation from the sun.
It seems strange that all of the global warming propaganda seldom if ever mentions decreased snow fall. It appears to always mention increased warming.
I wonder if any scientific study has been conducted as to the effect to global weather change caused by the cutting down of the rainforests.

Dr. Wagner cites two reasons for his resignation: 1) his estimate that the journal’s peer review process missed “fundamental methodological errors or false claims” and 2) “to personally protest against how the authors and like-minded climate sceptics have much exaggerated the paper’s conclusions in public statements”.

Dr. Wagner was clearly not responsible for putative failure of the qualified scientists who reviewed SB11 or for supervising a flawed peer review process. Under these circumstances, his responsibility as an editor and scientist was to expedite the proper review and publication of any high-quality papers that correct, challenge, or rebut SB11. By resigning, Dr. Wagner has failed to do this part of his job and shown his lack of respect for the process normally used to resolve scientific controversies.

This leaves reason 2): Dr. Wagner resigned because he is unhappy with how the paper’s conclusions have been reported to the public and how much impact they have had. If Dr. Wagner believed that Dr. Spencer had grossly misrepresented his paper to the public, he could have filed an academic misconduct complaint with the UAH. He did not do so. His resignation therefore was prompted by political, rather than scientific, considerations. He is unhappy that an article in Remote Sensing was used to effectively retard the global warming crusade. Dr. Wagner’s resignation – a political act – appears likely to backfire by further demonstrating to an already-mistrustful public (including me) how disgustingly politicized the science of global warming has become.

Further proof of Dr. Wagner’s motivations can be found by examining the details of his editorial – nowhere does Dr. Wagner discuss the scientific errors he believes were made by SB11 and the media reports that followed from it. He claims that SB11 ignored Trenberth et al (2010), but he doesn’t explain exactly what information in that paper “to some extent” refutes SB11. (T10 was a rebuttal of Lindzen and Choi (2009), a paper that used vastly different analytical methods than SB11 to assess the consistency between GCMs and observations.) He doesn’t cite any source for the “open discussions” he asserts refute SB11. He doesn’t cite any scientific errors that were made in the UAH press release or the Forbes article. If Dr. Wagner were interested in advancing understanding of climate science, he would have taken the time to fully explain the key scientific issues to his readers.

Final proof of Dr. Wagner’s motivations can be found in his complaint that 56,000 copies of SB11 had been downloaded from the Remote Sensing website. 56,000 scientists and concerned citizens wanted to read for themselves the scientific basis behind the sensation stories in the press. This is the main reason open access journals exist. Does Dr. Wagner really think that most of those 56,000 people are ignorant enough to believe one controversial paper will settle the global warming debate. His resignation will undoubtably bring additional readers to the Remote Sensing website and he has missed the opportunity to scientifically inform them.

After reading the comments, this seems off topic, but I was wondering if you have a comparison of the observed forcing with the lag regression for a ten year period prior to 1998. Comparing the 1988 through 1997 with 2000 to 2010 should show a slight shift in the lag due to the climate shift proposed in Tsonis et al and other papers.

Kudos to you for this paper. Whether “right” or not, you have (inadvertently) exposed how a group of “scientists” support diverstiy of opinion …. as long as the diversity is about one and a half thumb’s worth thick.

Einstein said that if his theories were wrong, the detractors would only need one author to say so instead of the 100 that had been given the task. If what you say is FUNDAMENTALLY wrong, then a follow-up article in the same magazine would have been sufficient to prove their points. And, in the process, eviscerate any further work you might do. But no such thing is possible, because what you (and others) have done is question the FAITH in a settled science and certainty of outcome. That is why Wagner resigned. No rebuttal can repair the irreparable. Once faith-based beliefs are seen for what they are, they become opinions, not truths. And nobody calls for massive social and economic shifts because of the opinions of others.

My late grandfather had an applicable saying – ‘Advise a fool against his will, he’ll be of the same opinion still’

The ones throwing darts at you are not interested in the truth (scientific or otherwise). They are the cool aid drinkers. The higher-ups are in it for profit. The whole man made global warming thing is a fraud and, I believe, they are being found out.

No. MDPI does only invoice article processing charges (APC) if and once a manuscript is accepted for publication. The acceptance of a manuscript does not depend from the authors’ willingness to support the article processing charges (APC) but is based on the outcome of the peer-review procedure. The final decision on whether a manuscript is accepted for publication or rejected will be taken by an external editor (usually the Editor-in-Chief of a journal or the Guest Editor of a special issue) based on the scientific merit of a submitted manuscript. /quote]

All manuscripts sent for publication in our journals are strictly and thoroughly peer-reviewed (research and review articles, spontaneous submissions as well as invited papers). The Editorial Offices will organize peer-review and collect at least two review reports per manuscript, ask the authors for adequate revision (peer-review again whenever necessary), before requesting the decision of an external editor (usually the Editor-in-Chief of a journal or the Guest Editor of a special issue). /quote

If man is causing some 1% small portion of additional warming (that was happening anyway), it’s only a matter of a few years difference, before 99% of the natural weather becomes colder and the same AGW people )or their descendents)are crying AGC.

They were supposed to stop saying “Global Warming” and instead use “Climate Change”, as dang it, it was embarrassing when it kept snowing at their conventions.

Roy’s paper, whether right or wrong, challenges a metaphysical thinking that is at serious risk of becoming an unquestionable faith. The reactions of many, already, suggests that the scientific process has become subordinated to institutional doxology.

Good science should politely upon that which validates, but eagerly grin at that which challenges. Indeed, any legitimate theorist understands that the great innovations in science have come from spaces that initially could not have been, upturning that which was accepted as fact. Moving beyond Hegel and the myth that we’ve arrived at perfection (a claim that global warming scientists have in common with political economists like Francis Fukuyama, who infamously decreed that the fall of the USSR was proof that Capitalism was correct, and that we’ve reached the end of history), what we can be more certain of is that the presence of those unquestioning faithful, who police the public sphere and arrest those who doubt the Rightfulness of the Faith, is historically known to immediately precede the total collapse of their metaphysic.

Most thinking humans are quite aware that man causes great harm to this world. Man most certainly damages his environment; a casual walk down any street or worse, a hike in the wilderness that uncovers his damaging presence, is all that is needed to evidence this. But the metaphysics of CO2 emissions which negates the relevance of the sun will belong to the same category of “science” which also ignored the sun, placing the earth squarely at the center of the universe.

As thinkers in times like these, we have a painful choice: be popular and wrong historically, or challenge the totalizing Religion of our epoch to advance real science and be castigated. These aren’t simple choices, but history has shown that those who matter and are remembered will always stand up to the cowards who cower in the shadows of their fascist ideology.

All Governments and all sheeple will try and denounce any science that does not back their view.
The unwillingness to even consider an alternative viewpoint by the climate fanatics makes me at least think that something is being obscured from me.
At least take comfort Roy that your paper will stand for all time as a David facing the Goliath of Climate Change.

1. Dr. Spencer’s religion and the antagonism to religion of some of his critics may explain motivations but do not confirm or debunk the underlying science, which must be the
issue decided by the scientists.

2. The most recent Ice Age ended due to non-human causes.

3. Warm periods have been propitious for life, while cold periods have been generally hostile.

4. The “Precautionary Principle” is erroneouos: a large possible harm with a small probablility does not give us adequate information from which to make decisions. Since California might slide into the sea, should they evacuate now? Since a mad sniper might shoot us, should we all wear bullet-proof vests?

5. Scientific consensus is useful but not infallible: the ether has been disproved; dark matter and dark energy have been discovered; the dinosaurs were not cold-blooded; ulcers are not caused by stomach acids; phlogiston has been replaced….Need I go on?

6. Anthropogenic contributions to current CO2 levels are estimated to be 4%. To double the CO2 level, would require roughly a twenty-fold increase in our emissions, assuming the same kind of partitioning between atmosphere,land and water as we have now. To predict that twenty-fold increase, one assumes relatively stagnant technology, which is unlikely. Time and technology march on.

7. Doubling the CO2 level is predicted to increase the mean temeperature a few degrees cnetigrade, primarily at night. It is hard to create mass death and destruction this way.

8. Peer review is useful but not infallible and is susceptible to manipulation.

9. Mathematical models are useful, too, but the same kind of people who were not reassured about the safety of nuclear energy despite the detailed modeling underlying the
REACTOR SAFETY STUDY are quite convinced of the hazards of CO2 emissions by the AGW models.

I don’t publish papers, and I’m not knowledgeable about the usual procedures involved. From my layperson perspective, when I read that ‘it [S&B11] essentially ignored the scientific arguments of its opponents’ and that ‘comparable studies published by other authors have already been refuted in open discussions’ without elaborating on the details of what arguments it ignored, or what open discussion points have refuted it, I see a hatchet job.

I ask you, when did such vague statements and cowardly politics (by this I refer to the Editor resigning without a retraction of the paper) become the method by which scientific argument is conducted?

You know, it’s not necessary to prevent nut jobs from being published. If Dr. Spencer is indeed nuts, his arguments, analysis, and conclusions would be obviously flawed, and his opposition would demonstrate these flaws to laypeople like myself and settle the matter. The unusual resignation of an editor without a retraction, the blindingly quick work to publish a rebuttal – these things demonstrate that Dr. Spencer’s opponents know perfectly well he is NOT nuts, and that his arguments have merit.

I’m beginning to care less about the truth of climate change than I care about what is happening to the process of scientific inquiry in our world today. Are we the children of the Renaissance or the Dark Ages?

RealClimate is a well known propaganda outlet for the AGW industry.
Their credibility is very suspect.
Afterall, they still try to defend the hokey schtick.
And they have repeatedly tried to shoot down the Svensmark theories.
We all now know how both of those turned out.

Finally, neither realclimate or deepclimate are peer reviewed journals and so ammount only to the opinions of a few well known AGW supporters.

Checked out the Cornwall Alliance of which Spencer
is a important member, and it is obviously the usual sheep’s clothing for the basic thrust of “Christian” evangelicalism: MONEY and the unrestricted ability to make it at any cost damn the environment/social responsibility or any other humanistic concern. Given Jesus’s attitude toward the money changers in the temple, it boggles the mind.

I couldn’t care less what Al Gore has done – personally I’m apolitical, and think they’re all as bad as each other.

What I do take issue with is people like Roy Spencer who espouse to be scientists when they clearly have a veiled interest in promoting a particular political agenda – in Spencer’s case it’s that of the wealthy, white, creationist American elite; the sort of people that scoff at the theory of evolution by natural selection and believe that world was created by God for us humans so we can do whatever the hell we like with it. It’s people like him that give scientists a bad name and more-or-less take an axe to the tree that is scientific progress.

Also just because someone disagrees with Spencer does not make them an environmentalist, or left wing, or an Obama supporter.

IMHO, that’s irrelevant. It doesn’t matter if Dr. Spencer is a member of the Cornwall Alliance. It doesn’t make Kevin Trenberth’s views correct if he’s a Mason, it’s got no bearing on anything if he wears women’s underwear while he works. It doesn’t make Dr. Spencer’s paper incorrect if Dr. Spencer is a card carrying member of the Klu-Klux-Klan. It doesn’t make the IPCC wrong about arthopogenic climate change if their central scientists openly worship Shiva the Destroyer when they leave the office.

On the day Dr. Spencer argues in his professional capacity that Scriptures justify accepting low climate sensitivity as fact, he’ll be fair game for this type of argument. Until then, it is out of the bounds of scientific debate to consider these questions while discussing climate change.

In what way does quoting the Commonwealth Alliance Charter refute my argument? Does it in ANY way address my argument?

Let me try again. If I told you that you’re wrong because your screen name is ‘mersyas’, you might respond (quite properly) that your screen name has nothing whatsoever to do with the validity of the argument you are making.

Similarly, I propose that any religious organization Dr. Spencer belongs to has nothing whatsoever to do with the validity of the arguments he makes.

I’m starting to wonder if I’m really awake; I’m experiencing a nightmarish sensation of horror observing that perhaps this isn’t obvious to everyone? I mean, REALLY?

I stopped reading after, “My problem is the models assume 100% is due to burning of fossil fuels. ”

Ronald, you really shouldn’t go on at length about something you obviously know nothing about. The ‘models’ are computer programs; GCMs – Global Circulation Models. The models make no assumptions about and have no opinion regarding AGW – they’re just computer programs. We haven’t reached the era of Artificial Intelligence, yet.

You are very naive if you think that Dr. Spencer’s
affiliation to an organization that believes that the universe is sustained and governed by a non-existent somebody has no relation to his critical thinking. Either he is a dupe, or a cynical supporter for the hidden agenda, the one that aligns so neatly with the conservative Republican dogma of unregulated capitalistic plunder.

Mersyas yes, because the whole Judo-Christian epoch was a terrible turn of events for the western world. Politics is the struggle between the haves and have-nots, and if one evaluates events and movements in this light, one can see the workings of those who, realizing their inferior numbers, must cloak their greed in the sanctimony of religion, praying upon the residue of fear of a imaginary god’s retribution. but time is on our side, and the power of the priesthood and similar frauds is on the wane. Dr. Spencer is just one more enabler.

I know better than to continue this discussion, and I’ll restrain myself from replying again. You are mixing up politics and religion with science, and they are completely separate things. The Nazis were evil, but the fact that they were evil and had reprehensible leaders and doctrine did not prevent their rockets from flying or their submarines from sailing – their science was sound. They are two completely different things. It doesn’t make a squitters worth of difference what Roy Spencer’s motives are, or Kevin Trenberth – their motives have nothing to do with the validity or falsehood of their scientific positions.

The paper has not been retracted, nor did Wagner state that it was wrong. But he clearly felt that the evidence that he had passed a substandard review was flagrant enough that he was obliged to resign. He also clearly felt that he has been blindsided by the authors offering interpretations of that work to the media that they hand not been willing to submit to peer review.

I’ve occasionally received reviews from manuscripts that struck me as so flagrantly wrongheaded that I had to trash my initial response draft as excessively combative. (A response casting aspersions upon the reviewer’s intelligence in boldface italics, however justified in one’s own opinion, rarely moves a manuscript forward toward publication. It is tempting to rationalize that “the reviewer has it in for me,” and dismiss his objections. But the thing to keep in mind is that a review (and Wagner’s comments constitute a belated editorial review) is almost certainly representative of the reactions of quite a few other readers. So the appropriate response is to calm down, grit one’s teeth, and try to see it from the reviewer’s point of view and understand what led him into such a perception.

Clearly, the editor’s attention has been directed to other publications and concerns that he feels that you should have addressed, and he feels that his own failure to ask you to do so was a serious lapse in judgement. Even if you think that those concerns are flagrantly wrong, you should think about how you could have better addressed them in your discussion. And you should probably also consider being a bit more daring in your choice of recommended reviewers, and in the future to offer reviewers who might challenge you. It is very tempting to recommend “friendly” reviewers, but it is better to deal with criticisms in revision than to have them cited by your critics after publication.

The AGW cult is most pathetic when threatened.
It is then that they show how desperate and bankrupt their cause has become.

They inevitably fall to attacking the messenger with lame and completely irrelevent comments on religious conviction and/or polotical views.
Both are of course irrelevent, but since they have nothing of substance to offer to counter valid science they puke it up in utter desperation.

As a layman interested in both the politics and the science of AGW, I’m surprised that in a realm where science is to rule the day:

1. Dr. Spencer publishes a study, peer-reviewed study. Why would an editor who knew who the reviewers were, if they reviewed it as badly as he indicates, not name them and not use them again?
2. Dr. Spencer uses his name in all his responses. Those who accuse him of extraordinary malfeasance us screen names. What exchange information with essentially ‘bots’? They cannot and will not be held responsible for their comments.
3. Dr. Spencer’s early response is that there isn’t any unquestioned scientific evidence of the sources of climate change, at least in degree and immediacy. It is deserving of continued research before we design and execute (or not) the proper response.
4. It is clear there is a vast amount of self-interest at work amongst those who posit AGW from Mr. Gore to the IPCC. The amount of funding available is nothing to ignore and as Phil Jones and the lads showed, there is a lot of money to be made…by redefining the process of Peer Reviewed.
5. I can imagine the resignation came about because he had better things to do and was dismayed over the fight.
6. For those of you who are actually scientists, as Lomborg says, Cool It. Just do the work and let the results speak for themselves.

I am very sorry to hear that you’re involved in this whole debacle, it cannot be a very nice place to be. You stated in your post:

“Instead, it appears the IPCC gatekeepers have once again put pressure on a journal for daring to publish anything that might hurt the IPCC’s politically immovable position that climate change is almost entirely human-caused.”

This is of course a correct assessment of the IPCC’s immovable position. If you care to read the IPCC Charter and the IPCC Document Submission Guidelines you will see that they do in fact define Climate Change as human-induced change above and beyond normal climate variability. They will only accept and publish papers that show this and will refuse any papers that show otherwise.

How can anyone expect to have any useful scientific output from such a blinkered process?

1000 to 1500 ppm would be a better concentration for the planet and it [sic] inhabitants.

Oh, really?

And what is your evidence for this delightful analysis?

Please be specific, because as an ecologist I have a rather different understanding of what the accompanying 10 – 15 C increase in mean global temperature (and the simultaneously accompanying ocean acidification) would do to the planet’s forests, alpine ecosystems, coral reefs, agriculture, water catchments, and many other essential ecosystem services and functions.

I suspect the reason Dr. Spencer does not respond to your “critique” is that your purpose is clearly to squelch debate and derail any further investigation, rather than to enlighten or search for common ground.

As for the critique itself… it’s pretty poor quality. It is essentially a strawman technique – ignore the obvious correlations and narrow the discussion to something you see as easily refuted thus, in your imagination, impugning the entire thrust of the argument based on what amounts to a technicality.

It is often a successful strategy for a defendant. Hordes of defense lawyers dedicate themselves to the practice. But, its aim is to thwart, rather than to serve, justice.

In any case, your critique doesn’t even hold up on that narrow basis, the key weak point being your assumed value for the heat capacity. In fact, heat capacity for the oceans is estimated to be about 20% higher than your value, plus or minus 40% 1-sigma. With those kind of error bars, there is ample room to allow Dr. Spencer’s parameterization as potentially valid.

I am anticipating three responses from you, so let me go ahead and preempt them: 1) What do you mean, technicality? 2) But, that’s the value Spenser used! 3) But, but… he still made a mistake!

1) It is a technicality because it does not address the essential hypothesis, which is that cloud response to variations in ocean circulation associated with the PDO could potentially explain the ~60 year cyclicality observed in the temperature record.

2) Whether Dr. Spencer might have gotten the right answer for the wrong reason is an argument addressing style over substance.

3) It was hardly a formal paper. In his book, Dr. Spencer clearly stated he tossed the model together one weekend afternoon, and laded the discussion with copious caveats.

Even if you’re research wasn’t flawed, certainly your relationship with the George C. Marshall Institute and the Cornwall Alliance presents a substantive conflict of interests. I wonder what scientific “advice” you give to folk who claim to truly believe the world is 10,000 years old. Or are the vast totality of scientists who would dispute that wrong again? I know, maybe you should publish another paper!

Ahhh….This story reminds me of my first year as a Grad Student.
I took a course where the Professor required us to write a paper and make a presentation to the class. The choice of topics were all ones she had published on, but in a broad field.
What I naively didn’t recognize was that it was an invitation to tell the whole class about her own work (and presumably how wonderful it was).
Not only did I decline the invitation, I omitted to list any of her papers as references (I had taken the trouble to download about 50 other papers which I genuinely considered more important. I doubt if most of the class even read 2 papers.)

Needless to say, I received a very low grade by the class standards. But the petulant scrawl that covered my submitted paper was astonishing.
It poured vitriol on just about anything and everything in sight. It was even more surprising because the professor had seemed such a pleasant person in class. She took the trouble to visibly make a note of my face, and then also took the trouble to tell my PhD supervisor about her low opinion of me.

I am deeply saddened reading this blog. When I was involved science meant careful self criticism and respect for other theories.

Truth is a very difficult goal to aim at evryone gropes towards it in small steps. But this world of climate “science” seems to be predicated on beliefs and feels more like a religious debate than a scinetific one.

re Douglas Windslow Cooper blog Sept 4
While I agree with 8 of the 9 points you make questioning the human induced global warming theory, I could not disagree more about 9
Disbelieving in present global warming by humans and believing in nuclear power safety have nothing to do with each other. The methods used in the models may be similar but the scientific reality of each have nothing to do with the other. Nuclear power reactors are not safe so any models that say they are, are flawed. Reality says otherwise. The innocent people who died in nuclear power reactor accidents at the US government reactor in the Pacific NW, the Three Mile Island may have been lucky to escape inthe short run,Chernoybl (sp?), and the unlucky people in northeastern Japan say otherwise. Spent fuel reactor rods have to be kept away from living animals including terrorists for thousands of years making future planning a nightmare

The resignation of the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal Remote Sensing indicates that he may be (is?) an AGW activist and possibly that he perceives that he failed at his job. The Spencer/Braswell paper will probably receive the usual technical back-and-forth that typically occurs between AGW believers and those who have determined that human activity has had no significant influence on climate.

Ginger,
Nuclear energy has been used to generate electricity in the U.S. since 1956 with no recorded deaths and no significant injuries. (check it out)

They stopped building power reactors like the one that failed at Chernobyl decades ago. The area that was contaminated so humans are not allowed to live there teems with animal and plant life.

The tsunami in Japan killed 20,000 or so and there have been no deaths from nuclear ration yet you assert that “nuclear power reactors are not safe”.

Within 500 years the radiation from nuclear waste is lower than that which emanated from the ore that was mined.

Papers are published for peer review not with the understanding that they represent absolute truth, but that they warrant further discussion and debate. Otherwise, why even have a peer review process?

Even if this editor had made some mistake in judgement, that is not grounds for carrying out career suicide. There is more here than meets the eye. There is a machine that’s pushing a singular viewpoint and it is bullying anyone who merely suggests considering an alternate point of view.

Most reading this blog on both sides of the argument know that the so-called peers in the peer review would not have let this paper be published because they disagree with its facts…it does not prove man made global warming…period! All over the so called scientific world every time someone points to findings other than man made global warming, people begin to throw dust into the air and beat their chests. Who are the scientists and who are the religious nuts? Why is it relevant to point to Dr. Spencer as a committed Christian? Are we suppose to say…OH that explains why he is an idiot! shame on all who try to convict anyone of heresy for just pointing to scientific facts! Shame on all of you because you know what you are doing, and you are still doing it…shame!

Regarding the increase in temperature, I thought it was understood that Gary was writing in response to Sam’s general question, presumably addressed to Dr. Spencer, who holds that our climate has a low sensitivity to CO2, so it makes little sense to jump on him for assuming low temperature increase as a result – it was an implicit assumption in the question he was addressing.

Finally, note that I’m not addressing ocean acidification in any way shape or form in my response.

‘I have asked the CERN colleagues to present the results clearly, but not to interpret them. That would go immediately into the highly political arena of the climate change debate. One has to make clear that cosmic radiation is only one of many parameters.’ –Rolf-Dieter Heuer, Director General of CERN, Welt Online 15 July 2011

When all the kids in the schoolyard exhibit signs of fear and intimidation, one of the simplest and most likely explanations is the existence of a schoolyard bully.

Thanks MarkB… I have limited time to go looking up the many papers that have been written on CO2 concentrations benefits and the low sensitivity of the climate to it.
Your summary was spot on.
Just a few notes.
The effect of CO2 on temps decreases as concentration increases. -exponentially
The sensitivity figures most warmists use are …. well just silly.
1000 ppm CO2 is standard on green houses and the range 1000 to 2500 are well known as optimal for most current plants since they evolved mostly in that range.
180 ppm is dangerously low, 280 is barely able to sustain some biodiversity and 380 is merely a good start toward a reasonable level.
There was a recent paper that corrolated the ~30% increase in popultation in the last 50 years to the ~30% increase in CO2 and the ~30% increase in crop output.
Without the added CO2, millions more may have starved.
BTW Plants need less water in higher CO2 environments.

All of the above is easy to find with a bit of time on google. Wish I had the time. But devout AGW faithful would not accept any of it anyway.

The debate here is political. The attacks are distractions from the failures of global warming theories and predictions.

AGW proponents do not debate the science merits, they engage in petty politics. The stated reason for the resignation “it essentially ignored the scientific arguments of its opponents” is patently false. As Dr. Spencer states, the paper’s topic was the scientific arguments of opponents of skeptics.

It is interesting that some editors still publish controversial articles. Apparently possibility of shame and resignation is not enough to prevent them.
Perhaps scientific community should reestablish punishments that had better tracking records through the history. In particular, certain punishment involving an oxidation process seems to be most appropriate for climate skeptics, deniers and their supporters. With that punishment and with the funding sources traced down and redirected back to the mainstream science this skepticism nonsense can finally be eradicated.

Keep doing good research and turning out good science, the insane amount of backlash over your paper which simply raises questions about how accurate climate models can be shows how this scientific topic has become dogma to many. Keep up the good work.

re Dan Pangburn blog Sept 5
You say without giving ANY references there have been no deaths from nuclear power reactors in the US. Where are your references for this amazing wrong remark???
There were three deaths when a US government nuclear power reactor exploded around 1956 in Idaho. As for no injuries
there were a number of blogs appearing in sites like the Wall Street Journal, BBC amd the Economist just after the Japanese explosion. (I guess non US deaths are nothing to you) At least one of these sites had over a hundred blogs on the injuries and accidents in the US. I did not list several of the blogs citing several injuries and at least one death (Fermi ??)which occured in Michigan Illinois area since I am not familar with those examples. I also, since I had trouble posting the blog and finally shortened it did not include the resports of higher than normal cancer deaths reported in men building the nuclear power reactors for nuclear submarines in Conn (Time magazine). If you read actual reports you check it out.
What you should have said is that there are no reports of deaths in COMMERCIAL reactors, but what use are such facts to people like you Also most if not all work developing and
building nuclear power reactors was done by people who had signed (like me) lifetime secrecy agreements with the government. They can never report any accidents or deaths. Only the govement could do that.

If that was an attempt at irony, you should be more careful; irony tends not to translate in posts. If that was an pure and simple expression of your position – get lost you pathetic thug. Tell you what, I’ll give you my address, and you can come give that burning at the stake thing a try. Wear Kevlar to give yourself a sporting chance.

IPPC scientists are defensive because they see a looming end to their money which because of misrepresentation of the physics behind co2 and weather they fooled politicians around the world to fund their studies.
World weather follows natural patterns caused by the sun (effects of solar cycles including solar wind variations, sunspot dynamics on flux, variations of UV rays) and grand variations of these. We just saw the end of a solar grand maximum where solar activity was higher for the last 50 yrs. Natural ocean cycles and polar vortex cycles (PDO,ADO,AO,AAO) which cause jet stream anomalies which direct warm and cold air (storms) are related to these solar cycles and now as we begin a grand solar minimum, and cool PDO, soon a cool ADO the earths weather will follow. Isn’t it interesting that the earth has been cooling the last 10 years whole CO2 increased. With a cool pacific (PDO 30 yrs long) we will see many La Ninas like last year which are cooling events. I bet Dr. Spencer can agree that my comments, while skimming a huge area of science, match up with the real world with the tendency for increased clouds with reflection of light (heat)to space during these cool cycles which we are now going to see.

re; Dan Pangborn Sept 5 blog REDUX
I am glad that someone else’s browser couldn’t handle reply. I shortened by response to get around problem. There are, in my mind, such similar responses by the committed to the unrelated problems of human induced global warming and the safety of nuclear power reactors I will finish what I orginally tried to say.
You are committed to only giving part of the story in my opinion. As to the living plants and animals around Chernoybl, the articles referred to areas more than 25 miles away, twenty five years later. The area within 10 miles is terrible; I couldn’t continue reading the article
You said no lives were lost at Fukushima. Again wrong but I too read the article you failed to cite. The three to six or more on site workers killed immediately; their deaths were included in total lives lost due to earthquake and tsumnai (sp_) The nuclear power industry will not accept the idea of cumulative lifetime radiation deaths. The 12 to 48 volunteers who went into the 3 reactors knowing they would die, only a couple died soon enough to qualify for the nuclear power companies long term radiation limit about
3 weeks max. The remaining ones died or are dying off site in hospitals so they don’t count either. The people who will die from groundwater contaminations down gradient don’t count either; off site and out of sight. I would not expect you to cite the articles about the death rates of suicidally minded technical men who travel the US to change the reactor cores giving wrong names etc because they would not be allowed in due to their past records.

I salute Dr. Spencer’s commitment to his field of endeavour and the principles of scientific method, kudos good sir, and may your efforts never wane.

It is observed there is great ice loss on the earth, particularly over the past couple decades, including glacial and ice masses from above sea level. In whole, at least five percent of the world’s ice has melted over the past twenty years, likely more. Interestingly, the sea level has not risen. Tides are as they always have been, no cities have been inundated, no nations lost to the seas. Isolated islands in the Pacific ocean may be actually sinking, where increased sea levels have been observed.

Yes, the mass of the ground which comprises them may be settling due to the effects of gravity, i.e. – they are like a pile of sand on a beach which will “sink” as waves erode and subside their foundations. Back to the point, ice loss, sea levels not changing.

The pinion of climate argument is the rise in sea level attributed to global temperature rise, wild estimates and conservative ones alike, all pin their arguments on the impending devastation and implied population loss resulting from this effect.

Problem IPCC, THE SEA LEVEL HAS NOT RISEN, then where has all that water gone, then? Simply, all the king’s horses, and all the king’s men, simply have no idea.

Allow me to suggest some possibilities, in no particular order, for this: 1) The atomosphere is capable of holding more water vapor than has been accounted for in so-called “scientific” reports which have been previously published *(see note below), 2) The water has somehow “evaportated” into space. While being extraordinary, until it is ruled out, officially, heh, this is still possible…; 3) It has drained via gravity into the earth to fill hiterto not understood space. There may be voids within the earth’s crust, or further below, or it recharged aquifers or volcanic steam reservoirs, who knows! 4) The ocean basins of the world may have increased in size to hold the additional water; simply, a large canvas of silt bottom may be compacted by additional “surface” mass/volume to produce a larger cubic volume of space to contain what it may; 5) Who knows amid these propositions, but there may quite likely, if not surely, be another explanation for this observed effect, that of ice-loss and non-resultant sea-level gain.

Simply put, five to fifteen percent of the earth’s measured ice mass has melted over the previous two decades and there has been a negligible change in sea levels DESPITE myraid contrary predictions.

The climate changes, this is natural; greenhouse gases are over 90% comprised of water vapor; CO2 emissions are but a fraction of them, and potentially incapable of tipping any balances. The Gaia hypothesis, that of the Earth being an organism, points to natural fluctuation; of course! Why are sea-cliffs worldwide eroded by water? Because the sea-level used to be much, much higher than it is today. Why are there fossilized plants below sea level? Because the sea level used to be much lower during certain period’s of Earth’s history. The founder of the Gaia hypothesis noted in an interview in the late 1980’s that the Earth is not particularly attached to any living organisms upon it, and that as a matter of fact over 99.9?% of them have already gone extinct. Oh why do we insist we are so different?

Truth be told, the actual danger we face today is that of decreased solar output and a resulting mini- ice age. Hopefully as mini- as possible, but these mini- ones do tend to last several if not many decades. So enjoy all hot summers because the widespread drought and desertification during a mini- ice age is terrible to withstand compared to relative ease enjoyed today.

* – (note)

The suppression of dissenting scientific views through publishing, in addition to other forums which can include dirty play, yes, is rampant and a positive sign of a regime of human-personified darkness amd non-intelligent action beginning to crack. When dissenting views and conclusions are suppressed through many and all rigors of drama and possibility it is not worthy of even pathos from the least of individuals anywhere. The establishment, per se, sees fit to quash what it may, but those actions scream clarion the establishment’s position is tenuous at best, and almost certainly not.

Information is greater than power, it is energy, it is power embodied, power in action; the above, and further above information may be most powerful, indeed.

Ginger,
No deaths to generate electricity from nuclear power in the US is correct (that is what commercial reactors are for). The 3 Idaho deaths were at an experimental reactor which was not for generating electricity.

No deaths from radiation at Fukushima is also correct.

It is amazing that what you revealed has been kept from the media who are so anxious to report such things. Oh wait . . . maybe none of it is true.

re Dan Pangburn Sept 7
Well you are proving by belief that the same kind of people that believe in human induced global warming believe Nuclear power is safe. By now therv are thousands of references on this subject. Try economist.com/topics Nuclear Accidents And Disaasters for 3 pages of references since March 11. You give me opportunity to put out some more sites: Ground water contamination; Hansford plant (Washington), Savammah River Plant, Ga. Incidents those famous strawberries at Oak Ridge Lab. The Idaho reactor was producing elecricity; being used for research not commercial power

re Dan Pangburn Sept 7 REDUX
Well bad eyesight and browser trouble is having a real bad affect on my postings so will be brief
check out Marketwatch.com and in their blogs type fukushima in search box. Of the about 700 listings since March 2011 are
Post-Chernobyl lessons of radiation sickness by Alec Davis
March 17,2011
“twenty-five years after the nuclear disaster killed dozens and sickened thousands”
also
50 workers are all that stand between the world and nuclear catastrophe by Chris Noble Mar ch 16, 2011
You should do more reading before blogging or your browser is worse than mine

You said “you are proving by belief that the same kind of people that believe in human induced global warming believe Nuclear power is safe”. Google my name and you will get many hits. Some show that I have known for years that belief in significant human caused global warming is a mistake. Others show that I discovered what really caused the warm-up of the 20th century. I monitor the five reporting agencies and their average shows that the warming ended years ago. It is also obvious to me from experience of the nuclear power industry that nuclear power is safe. Explain how this proves what you said.

You must have thought that I would not check out your assertions.

The article in the Economist is about the Fukushima tsunami in Japan.

The Hanford ground water issue is about low-level waste that resulted from making nuclear weapons many decades ago. This has never been a health hazard except in the minds of hysterical people. Several years ago, which was the last time that I studied this leakage problem, a program was in work to resolve it.

As to “those famous strawberries”, I extracted this from the Oak Ridge radiated strawberries study “Thus this assay provides no evidence that irradiated strawberries are mutagenic.”

The blogs in Market Watch are about Chernobyl and Fukushima.

Chris Noble makes his living by writing scary stories. The story about the 50 workers is about Fukushima after the tsunami.

Chernobyl demonstrated that you should not build graphite moderated power reactors without containment. Nobody does that any more. As a side note, the graphite moderated reactors that produced the materials for the first atomic bombs saved millions of lives by suddenly ending WW2.

Fukushima demonstrated that, although earthquake design standards appear to be adequate, the possibility of really big tsunamis needs to be designed for. It also demonstrated that living close to the beach is far more dangerous than living next to a nuclear reactor.

The Time article that you referred to showed pictures that could be expected of a facility that has been abandoned for 25 years. Your assertions of the surrounding contaminated countryside are completely misleading. I have read about the surrounding area before. A quick search now obtained http://www.greenfacts.org/en/chernobyl/index.htm which states “the area has become a unique sanctuary for biodiversity.” Your statement that the “area within 10 miles is terrible; I couldn’t continue reading the article” is disingenuous.

re Dan Pangburn Sept 10
From the simple wrong facts you posted in previous blogs I had kind of made up my mind you were a 10-17 old trying to get someone to do your research for a project your teacher or other adult had assigned. However you are now claiming to be an adult with references. I do not know what organizaton you are associated with but you are again very adept at misleading to the point of wrong remarks. Yes the articles were about the tsumani (sp) or Chernobyl but a reading of these and the 700 other articles on the Marketwatch.com blogs will tell you that nuclear power is not safe. If the article mentions earthquake therefore that is the topic and nuclear disasters don’t figure in by your standards. I am not an activist of any sort. I do not enjoy this blog as I have post traumatic stress syndrome which means I do not remember but relive upsetting experiences in my life. Those experiences include being forced to look at color photos of people dead or dying of radiation sickness. I have merely gone on the record so when the next nuclear disaster happens, people can’t say why did no one say or do anything. You and your cohorts are the reasson. Pax

It is not that simple. The sky is layered, and every layer has a different temperature. The clouds are mobile and these are different from one atmospheric layer to another. And visible clouds do not make up the total moisture that is in the atmosphere.

The debate here is not about the fact that the climate is changing but whether humans are contributing to that change. The CO2 driven climate change is what is bothering most people because it is insignificant in the atmosphere, it is heavier than air, it is absorbed by the biosphere. During rainy season in the tropics, plant life grow at very fast rates. Growth rates of plants in the tropics have not been factored by climate scientists. There are trees that can grow up to a third of a meter in diameter in just eight years. Plant growth rates when these are fast translate to more CO2 being absorbed and more oxygen being released. The interaction of the biosphere with the atmosphere is another variable that makes climate science difficult, and therefore it is premature for any scientist to claim that they know exactly what is going on.

I have yet to see an isolation report identifying the specific contribution to the Earth’s warming from every variable. CO2 levels in the atmosphere is determined by the carbon cycle which include the emission side and the absorption side. Logically, during droughts and El Niño’s when plant growth slows down, the absorption capacity of the biosphere is impaired. However, during La Niña’s the CO2 absorption rates increase dramatically. And here, it should be kept in mind, that once the plant absorb the CO2, it permanently keeps it. Therefore, in second growth forests, where the trees are young, the growth rates are fast. Second growth forests develop after logging operations in virgin or original forests. Over the last 50 years, the tropics have been logged over for wood for export to Japan, Europe and the United States. These forests are now beginning to re-grow, except those forest lands that have been permanently converted for use in agriculture. Now how much of these human tree harvesting activity been factored into the climate models? Has there been a determination of how much CO2 is absorbed for every hectare of tropical forests, and how much is absorbed in temperate forests? As ice retreats, more forests grows in areas left by ice sheets. If there is a reduction in ice covered areas, how much is the compensation in the development of new forest areas?

Until scientists isolate the variables (the coolers and the warmers) and determine exactly how much each contribute to the climate change, the debate should be allowed to continue, and any claim that it has been definitely resolved is premature. Let us keep the debate open with our minds also open.

The political side of anthropogenic global warming is central to the entire argument. Whether or not man actually influences the climate in any substantial way is not. That is an argument for the scientific community. For the rest of us, it is the politics.

First: Note how man finds a change in the weather or climate and finds himself at fault. No different today than when men sacrificed virgins to the gods and similar actions. The weather changes and SOMETHING WE HAVE DONE is the problem and so we must punish ourselves.

Thus the politics – how are we to punish ourselves?

Second: The only other legitimate political question has to do with whether or not man can actually control the weather. Can he do something which will keep it ‘satisfactorially’ within certain bounds? If the answer is not an unequivicable yes, then we should do nothing but live within what is given.

The arguments here reflect the intent to politicize, thus control other’s lives. Global climate change is just a method, a made up reason, in that attempt.

Earth/Gaia doesn’t care if man survives. Only man does. And the only way man is going to survive any length of time is to get some of us off the planet. If not, sooner or later, we go the way of the dinosaurs. And a billion years from now some roach will look at our remains and wonder what happened.

For at least 200 years, people have argued that the planet is nearing overpopulation. Malthus was wrong, Ehrlich is wrong, and you’re wrong. There is simply no evidence that the planet or our species requires lower human population “to survive any length of time.”

That’s the thing I love so much about environmentalists: it’s not so much that the love the planet as that they hate the human race.

No, I am not wrong. You misunderstood my comment. I didn’t say get rid of some people, I said get some of us off the planet.

Now, guessing, Mr. Kaminski, you’ve never heard of space travel, nor the theory of a large asteroid hitting the earth and killing off the dinosaurs and I am not going to educate you in this space, but getting some of us off the planet had nothing to do with population pressure, but everything to do with spreading out through the stars.

So I accept your apology in advance, and hope you will read more accurately in the future.

really very good and informative.
But the paper WAS precisely addressing the scientific arguments made by our opponents, and showing why they are wrong! That was the paper’s starting point! We dealt with specifics, numbers, calculations…while our critics only use generalities and talking points. There is no contest, as far as I can see, in this debate. If you have some physics or radiative transfer background, read the evidence we present, the paper we were responding to, and decide for yourself.